Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. I endorse the scientific consensus on climate change to protect my career and reputation. To do otherwise would be dumb, at least in my situation.

If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory: Climate science believers state that all the evidence, and 98% of scientists, are on the same side. Then skeptics provide links to credible-sounding articles that say the science is bunk, and why. How the heck can you – a non-expert – judge who is right?

You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you. But how reliable are experts, even when they are mostly on the same side?

Ask the majority of polling experts who said Trump had only a 2% chance of becoming president. Ask the experts who said the government’s historical “food pyramid” was good science. What you really want to know is whether climate change looks more like the sort of thing that turns out to be right or the sort of thing that turns out to be wrong.

It seems to me that a majority of experts could be wrong whenever you have a pattern that looks like this:

A theory has been “adjusted” in the past to maintain the conclusion even though the data has changed.

Prediction models are complicated.

The models require human judgment to decide how variables should be treated.

There is a severe social or economic penalty for having the “wrong” opinion in the field.

There are so many variables that can be measured – and so many that can be ignored – that you can produce any result you want by choosing what to measure and what to ignore.

The argument from the other side looks disturbingly credible.

I’m a trained hypnotist and I have studied the methods of persuasion for years. No one is using reason, facts, or common sense to arrive at a decision about climate science. Here’s what you are using to arrive at your decision:

Fear

Unwarranted trust in experts

Pattern recognition

On the question of fear, in my experience, any danger we humans see coming far in the future we always find a way to fix.

On the question of trusting experts, I see experts as far less credible than most people assume.

And when it comes to pattern recognition, I see the climate science skeptics within the scientific community as being similar to Shy Trump Supporters. The fact that a majority of scientists agree with climate science either means the evidence is one-sided or the social/economic pressures are high. And as we can plainly see, the cost of disagreeing with climate science is unreasonably high if you are a scientist.

And if the risk of climate change isn’t real, I will say I knew it all along because climate science matches all of the criteria for a mass hallucination by experts.

Much to my surprise, I showed up in the WikiLeaks releases before the election. In a 2014 email, a staffer at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta in 2003, took credit for a campaign to have me eliminated as a writer for Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website. In the email, the editor of the think tank’s climate blog bragged to one of its billionaire donors, Tom Steyer: “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538.”

WikiLeaks provides a window into a world I’ve seen up close for decades: the debate over what to do about climate change, and the role of science in that argument.

When substantively countering an academic’s research proves difficult, other techniques are needed to banish it. That is how politics sometimes works, and professors need to understand this if we want to participate in that arena.

More troubling is the degree to which journalists and other academics joined the campaign against me.

I believe climate change is real and that human emissions of greenhouse gases risk justifying action, including a carbon tax. But my research led me to a conclusion that many climate campaigners find unacceptable: There is scant evidence to indicate that hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or drought have become more frequent or intense in the U.S. or globally. My conclusion might be wrong, but I think I’ve earned the right to share this research without risk to my career.

Instead, my research was under constant attack for years by activists, journalists and politicians.

Or look at the journalists who helped push me out of FiveThirtyEight. My first article there, in 2014, . . . pointed out that the global cost of disasters was increasing at a rate slower than GDP growth, which is very good news. Disasters still occur, but their economic and human effect is smaller than in the past.

That article prompted an intense media campaign to have me fired. Writers at Slate, Salon, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Guardian and others piled on.

In March of 2014, FiveThirtyEight editor Mike Wilson demoted me from staff writer to freelancer. A few months later I chose to leave the site after it became clear it wouldn’t publish me. The mob celebrated. Penn State’s Michael Mann called my departure a “victory for climate truth.” The Center for American Progress promised its donor Mr. Steyer more of the same.

Yet the climate thought police still weren’t done. In 2013 committees in the House and Senate invited me to a several hearings to summarize the science on disasters and climate change.

In early 2014, not long after I appeared before Congress, President Obama’s science adviser John Holdren testified before the same Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He was asked about his public statements that appeared to contradict the scientific consensus on extreme weather events that I had earlier presented. Mr. Holdren followed up by posting a strange essay, of nearly 3,000 words, on the White House website under the heading, “An Analysis of Statements by Roger Pielke Jr.,” where it remains today.

I suppose it is a distinction of a sort to be singled out in this manner by the president’s science adviser. Yet Mr. Holdren’s screed reads more like a dashed-off blog post from the nutty wings of the online climate debate, chock-full of errors and misstatements.

But when the White House puts a target on your back on its website, people notice. Almost a year later Mr. Holdren’s missive was the basis for an investigation of me by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Grijalva explained in a letter to my university’s president that I was being investigated because Mr. Holdren had “highlighted what he believes were serious misstatements by Prof. Pielke of the scientific consensus on climate change.”

The “investigation” turned out to be a farce. My heretical views can be traced to research support from the U.S. government.

But the damage to my reputation had been done, and perhaps that was the point.

But the lesson is that a lone academic is no match for billionaires, well-funded advocacy groups, the media, Congress and the White House. If academics—in any subject—are to play a meaningful role in public debate, the country will have to do a better job supporting good-faith researchers, even when their results are unwelcome. This goes for Republicans and Democrats alike, and to the administration of President-elect Trump.

Academics and the media in particular should support viewpoint diversity instead of serving as the handmaidens of political expediency by trying to exclude voices or damage reputations and careers. If academics and the media won’t support open debate, who will?

Matt Ridley – My Life as a Lukewarmer.

In response to RP Jr’s op-ed, Matt Ridley tweeted the link to a comparable essay he wrote in 2015 – My Life as a Lukewarmer. Excerpts:

I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future.

This view . . . is even more infuriating to most publicly funded scientists and politicians, who insist climate change is a big risk.

I was even kept off the shortlist for a part-time, unpaid public-sector appointment in a field unrelated to climate because of having this view, or so the headhunter thought. In the climate debate, paying obeisance to climate scaremongering is about as mandatory for a public appointment, or public funding, as being a Protestant was in 18th-century England.

I was not always a lukewarmer. When I first started writing about the threat of global warming more than 26 years ago, as science editor of The Economist, I thought it was a genuinely dangerous threat.

Gradually, however, I changed my mind. What sealed my apostasy from climate alarm was the extraordinary history of the famous “hockey stick” graph, which purported to show that today’s temperatures were higher and changing faster than at any time in the past thousand years. I began to read the work of two Canadian researchers, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick.

What shocked me more was the scientific establishment’s reaction to this: it tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. And then a flood of emails was leaked in 2009 showing some climate scientists apparently scheming to withhold data, prevent papers being published, get journal editors sacked and evade freedom-of-information requests, much as sceptics had been alleging. That was when I began to re-examine everything I had been told about climate change and, the more I looked, the flakier the prediction of rapid warming seemed.

The policies being proposed to combat climate change, far from being a modest insurance policy, are proving ineffective, expensive, harmful to poor people and actually bad for the environment: we are tearing down rainforests to grow biofuels and ripping up peat bogs to install windmills that still need fossil-fuel back-up. Some insurance policy.

To begin with, after I came out as a lukewarmer, I would get genuine critiques from scientists who disagreed with me and wanted to exchange views. They often resorted to meta-arguments, especially the argument from authority: if the Royal Society says it is alarmed, then you should be alarmed. If I want argument from authority, I replied, I will join the Catholic Church.

One by one, many of the most prominent people in the climate debate began to throw vitriolic playground abuse at me. I was “paranoid”, “specious”, “risible”, “self-defaming”, “daft”, “lying”, “irrational”, an “idiot”. Their letters to the editor or their blog responses asserted that I was “error-riddled” or had seriously misrepresented something, but then they not only failed to substantiate the charge but often roughly confirmed what I had written.

Talking of the committee on climate change, last year Lord Deben commissioned an entire report to criticise something I had said. Among other howlers, it included a quotation from the IPCC but the quote had a large chunk cut from the middle. When this cut was restored the line supported me, not Lord Deben. When I pointed this out politely to Lord Deben, he refused to restore the excision and left the document unchanged on the committee’s website.

I suppose all this fury means my arguments are hitting home.

I have never met a climate sceptic, let alone a lukewarmer, who wants his opponents silenced. I wish I could say the same of those who think climate change is an alarming prospect.

JC reflections

The truly astonishing thing about all this is how little climate heretics – such as myself, Roger Pielke, and Matt Ridley – actually diverge from the consensus science position: RP Jr. hews strictly to the IPCC consensus; Matt Ridley is on the lukewarm side of the IPCC consensus, and I have stated that the uncertainties are too large to justify high confidence in the consensus statements.

RP Jr and Matt Ridley provide appalling examples of the personal and arguably unethical attacks from other scientists, journalists, elected politicians and others with government appointments.

Scott Adams provides some genuine (and as always, humorous) insights into the psychology behind the dynamics of the climate debate.

As to the question: to be or not to be a climate heretic?

I’m planning a climate heretic blog post shortly after the first of the year. After seeing RP Jr’s title, perhaps I will title it ‘Happy Heretic’ (stay tuned). Here’s to hoping that the Age of Trump will herald the demise of climate change dogma and acceptance of a broader range of perspectives on climate science and our policy options .

855 responses to “Climate Heretic: to be or not to be?”

“…the cost of disagreeing with climate science is unreasonably high if you are a scientist.”

I am a scientist who agrees with 90% of the so-called “consensus” position. The problems lie in that final 10%, where the data is scarce, the funding is bountiful, and the politics are heavy. And it is only that 10% that matters, where the risks are as high as the uncertainty. The cost of disagreeing with *this 10% of climate science* is unreasonably high, I can confirm, even though a fair and responsible study without political interference would present a much different picture than the narrative many media companies encourage.

Spot on. My own small involvement in this field (having the audacity to use Freedom of Information to actually see the raw data used by CRU) led Phil Jones to conspire to get me fired from my academic position in Oxford.

That is shameful, sorry it happened. I have reservations about even engaging in civil technical debate because I know I could easily lose federal support for future projects. The ironic thing is that I have published many papers on advanced energy technologies that would be (and have been) embraced by the alarmist-types. There are good reasons for making buildings and aircraft more energy efficient and improving distributed water supplies that have nothing to do with any imminent weather catastrophe attributed to CO2 emissions. Yet I feel real pressure not to publish other work that points to an underestimation of radiative transport through the atmospheric window when using the graybody surface emission model (which all CMIP5 models do). Being forced to choose between career risks and shelving potentially useful work is not ideal.

Track records are no guide to the future. Prophets are usually pretty good at predicting the past.

However, I’ll predict the future for a small fee. What sort of prediction would you like? My track record is 100% so far. Trust me. Obviously, my methods are secret – intellectual property protection, you understand.

I offer a money back guarantee. I guarantee it will be extremely difficult to get your money back – trust me.

Reblogged this on Utopia – you are standing in it! and commented:
All in all, it is not a career move to be even slightly sceptical about global warming. It is a bit like trying to get a job in the Treasury or reserve bank in the 1980s while espousing monetarist views.

The current composition of the atmosphere is as a result of CO2 breathing organisms (plants and bacteria) and is composed primarily of a neutral molecule N2 and a POISON. This POISON is O2, and is a waste product of photosynthesis. The evolution of higher lifeforms was a response to the pollution of the atmosphere by early life.

Oxygen breathing life evolved to utilise this waste product and balance the atmosphere. Nevertheless, the CO2 breathing lifeforms have been winning the war of waste products and slowly poisoning themselves. Humans are the final link in the chain, our evolutionary purpose is to change the balance of power, and reverse the trend of lower CO2. We need to release fossil CO2 to the atmosphere so that the cycle of life can continue.

The sun, the oceans, stochastic events and the very nature of the system that by its design encourages conflict, outweigh the fluctuations of a trace gas who;s effect is boxed in by all around it. As in any problem, its a matter of identifying the main drivers and assigning them value. Climatologists should be made to long range forecast for a year so they understand in an applied manner what they are playing with when they trying to explain weather events as a way to tell me how bad the climate is getting. The fact is that we can not write off co2, but its affect is at best questionable, and most likely so tiny compared to all the other major forces that have controlled the planets climate for so long, that only a zealot would reach a conclusion that it is now the climate control knob.
Peace

Tell us the one about not using adjusted data again, I still get a laugh out of that.
You know at # Fakenews.@GISS or was it Altnews@BEST?
Did you ever notice how alt-scientists make wild claims and never qualify their claims with any real data.

This alt- prefix to everything is curious to an outsider. Some kind of unfathomable homage to Alt-A mortgages – the unmentionable first cousins of subprime? Crashed in 2010-2011 and so Big Blue media could not mention all the foreclosures etc. It would clash with the message that peace, harmony and prosperity had returned under Obama! As far as I know, the original Alt-?

Mosher is just being his endearing self. Like the 3 year old who found a trick to get guffaws from Gramps and Nana and believes he is on to something, he is trained like the Pavlovian puppy to repeat and repeat the trick expecting the same response. And like the Energizer Bunny, he won’t or can’t shut it off.

No, because sceptics only have to say “you are wrong”. They don;t have to make any claims about alternatives or present a different theory.

This isn’t the Arts, it’s science. We may discuss alternatives and some of them may be “wild”, but that is totally irrelevant. The claims made by you an the AGW crowd are refuted by looking at your claims, not with reference to anything else.

foias, I believe Mosher is playing off the “alt-right” which depending on who you ask, is a white-nationalist group that are active on several blogs, including the comments section at Breitbart.com. Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign chief and now advisor was the editor at Breitbart and claimed that Breitbart was a platform for the alt-right, albeit under a different definition. Now the big blue smear machine has in Bannon a direct link from the raciest alt-right to Trump. Therefore proving, in their minds, that Trump is a white-nationalist and racist to the core as they have been claiming. A political smear at worst, partial truth at best.

Steven Mosher: Did you ever notice how so called skeptics make wild claims and never qualify their claims with any sense of uncertainty.

That question may have merit, but its position as a seeming response to the post by Joe Bastardi is potentially misleading: it seems to be an innuendo that something in Joe Bastardi’s post is a wild claim, or that someone who write “we can not write off CO2” is some kind of “so called skeptic. “… most likely so tiny … climate control knob.” is qualified, and not wild.

Would you like to tighten it up a bit, and write an actual proposition?

And no, I dont consider your name calling to be an attack.
The simple fact is the #Altscience crew are pretty consistent when it comes to making wild claims without any qualifying uncertainty.

Here is a test.

Go to any skeptical site and count the number of posts or comments you read that blather on about solar cycles, or that claim ECS has to be zero
Or any number of “definitive” statements. Or debunked “trace gas” arguments.

Mosher’s “alt-science” is just his own cute little version of the d-word. No one wants to be called the equivalent of a white supremacist any more than a holocaust d’nier. (and he thinks he’s real cute in getting away with it) Maybe mosher would be so bold as to discuss the merits of both white supremacy and holocaust d’nile? After all, just like agw skeptics, it’s well known that both groups actually DO have the data on their side. Don’t worry Dr. Curry, i know well that such a discussion would not be welcome on your (georgia based) blog. Just trying to point out here that “alt” may not necessarily be so…

Agree totally Joe. I once sat through a lecture by a NWP modeller at Reading University who was going through a new convection and rainfall scheme that was soon to be implemented in a major weather model. At the end of it he said that he put in the latest data today and this new scheme shows why it is dry weather today……It had been raining non stop for 2 hours….and someone called out….”have you not looked out the window”…the response was….a quick glance at the rain drenched windows and shuffled through his papers and said …”that shouldn’t be happening!” with no further explanation. That and many other experienced examples was the reason I realised that weather/climate modellers…may be very talented at doing what they do….creating incredibly complex models…but using these models day in day out and observing weather patterns, extremes and their relation to climate is where Meteorologists have a grandstand view of what is really going on rather than what computer models, media or fearful enviromentalists say is expected to happen. This is why surveys consistently show Meteorologists are no where near the 97% consensus on global warming and the grand claims of weather extremes and impeding disaster for the world. I would also argue that often NWP modellers come not from a pool of people interested in weather and climate, but rather that they have particular skills required to make the model. Unless you have a clear understanding of how these models are going to be used and display data then all you are doing is playing with numbers and computer code.

“This is why surveys consistently show Meteorologists are no where near the 97% consensus on global warming and the grand claims of weather extremes and impeding disaster for the world…..”

Well I am a (retired) meteorologist from the UKMO, who fully agrees with AGW science – and I do not know of any ex-colleagues who think differently.
Your “surveys” may be from the US where most work for media companies – and guess what – they are often right-wing in tendency and are very far from a scientific environment.
It is well-known that people tend to lean towards and comply with the opinions of colleagues/employers.

However on searching this it would appear to prove both you and my reasoning wrong (though it seems opinions have changed a deal in the last 5 years – maybe that long since I looked into it)….

“I would also argue that often NWP modellers come not from a pool of people interested in weather and climate, but rather that they have particular skills required to make the model. Unless you have a clear understanding of how these models are going to be used and display data then all you are doing is playing with numbers and computer code.”

No – in the UKMO at least, the 2 are closely integrated.
NWP is atmospheric physics primarily and that creates weather which metmen observe and forecast.
Verification schemes are run to validate the efficacy of any changes made to the code and it will not be implemented operationally unless having a +ve effect.

Joe: As I understand it (and I could be wrong), climate science has little to do with making long-range weather forecasts. In weather forecasting, imprecise starting conditions and chaos conspired to make features in the forecast atmosphere unreliable a few weeks into the future. The larger heat capacity of the ocean means that patterns in SSTs can be forecast further into the future and they tend to direct the atmospheric flow along familiar lines for months (with plenty of variation from day to day).

As I understand it, climate science begins much more crudely: How much heat is entering and leaving the planet as radiation? CO2 is the simplest major player in this game. Unlike weather forecasting, it doesn’t make any difference where on the planet the retained heat ends up after CO2 slows down the rate it escapes to space. Once heat stops flowing into the ocean (equilibrium), the planet’s new average temperature will depend only radiation entering and leaving the planet. Sure, we don’t know whether we will It is not approach that equilibrium state in somewhat more than a century or in a millennium. Yes, until we approach equilibrium, we need to worry about what fraction of retained heat ends up in the deep ocean and what fraction ends up in the atmosphere, surface and mixed layer. Yes, rising absolute humidity, changing cloud cover and altitude and lapse rate are critical, but they all impact the energy flux into and out of the planet. There have been warmer and cooler periods in the Holocene (possibly caused by the sun), but so far this is no evidence that the cause of those can compete with doubled CO2.

Precipitation is a little more challenging. In the long run, the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere and at the surface must be equal (after ocean heat uptake becomes negligible). Evaporation/latent heat (not net radiation, OLR-DLR) is the main player in heat flow from the surface to the upper atmosphere troposphere, where it can escape to space. The rate of evaporation (and therefore precipitation) is therefore limited by radiative cooling to space.

Forecasting without specifying where it will be warmer and cooler and without specifying where the rain will fall is incredibly crude compared with what you do. AOGCM’s differ significantly about regional climate change – ie their forecasts are probably less accurate than your poorest long-range forecasts. However, as best I can tell, climate science can crudely inform us about global changes. Unless you consider a likely range for ECS of 1.5-4.5 K too wide to be meaningful forecast, the predictions of climate science are valuable.

A radiative forcing of 1 W/m2 is capable of warming the atmosphere plus mixed layer of the ocean at an initial rate of 0.2 K/yr (and that warming rate begins to slow within a few years because a warmer planet radiates more heat to space and because some heat is transported below the mixed layer. These are pitifully weak compared to changes in weather and seasons. As a weather forecaster, you are correct to be disdainful of them. However those forces always point in the same direction, and after decades, significant changes may occur.

The gravitational attraction between a proton and electron is 10^-40 times weaker than the electrostatic force. Nevertheless, the most important large-scale force in the universe is gravity, because almost every positive charge has a negative charge nearby to counter most of the electrostatic force, leaving gravity as the predominant force. Massive amounts of energy shift through and between the atmosphere and oceans, but these internal shifts are as meaningless to long-term climate change as the massive amount of electrostatic energy in the Earth’s atoms is to the Earth’s gravity.
Now, if you could just tell me whether there will be less cloud cover on a warmer planet, I can decide whether to be a lukewarmer or an alarmist (:)).

franktoo, your proposition that the main knob of forcing is GHG and that everything else is counterbalancing internal variability is not new. Just in case you are not aware of all the counter propositions I will list a few:

1) The energy balance includes not just what IR energy can escape but also what sunlight is not reflected at the upper atmosphere, off clouds and off the surface. All are variable, with the later being potentially a negative feedback dampening warming.

2) Although volcanic aerosols are short lived their significant blocking of sunlight is banked into the oceans, resetting the heat content. Thus in fact the surface never achieves equilibrium but is in a constant state of gradual warming until the next major volcanic event. The last 130 years have shown a lull in major volcanoes as compared to the prior centuries.

3) Solar activity modulation although relatively small can be for significant time scale, making it a significant net energy change.

4) The Little Ice Age and other paleo-climate fluctuations, on a much larger time frame than can be explained by internal intra-decadal variability, are not correlated with GHG, and thus provide strong evidence of non-GHG forcing variability.

5) Modern ice cores reveal that contrary to Arrhenius’ hypothesis of CO2 being the driver of the ice ages that in fact CO2 fluctuated in the counter direction to the abrupt glacial swings, offering little resistance, and instead adjusting in the opposite direction as warming due SST changing ocean solubility of CO2. #Not-a-driver

6) If Sea level rise is the only down side with upsides of increases in crop yields and habitable land mass then perhaps mitigation of storm surge vulnerability is a more apt solution. If cooling is indeed needed then geoengineering to modulate reflected sunlight would provide a controllable temperature knob that could be reversed for dangerous natural (or human caused) cooling events. We all agree we would not want to re-continuation of the glacial cycle under any circumstances.

The forcing from volcanic aerosols (when integrated over time) and the sun appear to me to be smaller than the forcing from rising GHGs. W/m2 matter. In terms of W/m2, CO2 continuous forcing is already comparable in size to Pinatubo at its peak. I’d never call CO2 the control knob, just a large player among others.

The warming and cooling associated with the LIA, MWP, etc appear to be smaller than expected from AGW. If ECS is 3 K or greater, another LIA won’t make much difference. IF ECS is 1.5 K, another LIA won’t be needed. We can’t count on another LIA arriving in the next few centuries in either case.

It doesn’t make too much difference to me precisely what combination of GHGs, aerosols, solar, volcanos and unforced variability “caused” 20th-century warming – 20th century change is too small to defined ECS with adequate accuracy. See Lewis and Curry 2014. And ice ages don’t place many limits on ECS either, except that they suggest our climate is relatively unstable in the cold direction over millennial periods of time when slow surface albedo and CO2 outgassing contribute to other feedbacks. Our future is under the control of ECS/cloud feedback – whatever that may be.

GW will bring an increase in transpiration to counterbalance the fertilizing effects of CO2.

Frank, keep in mind how hard it is to crunch all of the variables and accurately predict the climate in 80-100 years. Pinatubo was a big one but if we get another Tambora (1815) we will reset the GMST by 30 years rather than Pinatubo’s 3. If we had a Toba (74,000 BC), Taupo (25,360 BC) it would endanger the Holocene inter-glacial if CO2 were allowed to go even back to 350ppm.

Yet, despite that the Oceans 2K study McGregor (2015) pinning the LIA on volcanism by use of GCM analysis, I strongly doubt it. For example, Tambora was in 1815 yet this was the closing of the LIA and the AGW (coal) did not even begin to trickle until 1850. My personal suspicion is that deep ocean disturbances can overwhelm and make SST plummet causing a LIA mostly out of unforced variability. I suspect inter-glacials end by statistical hazard of simultaneously overlapping random cooling events that white out the NH lowering albedo in an irreversible feedback loop lasting ~100K years.

For this reason I think human technology should address the issue by doubling down and intervening more in affecting GMST not less. If we dusted the top of the mesosphere 80km up with a nano-particle colloid we could give Earth and artificial glowing ring shading the equator. If we had an unforeseen cooling event we could dust the ring with an oppositely charged nano-particle causing the ring to precipitate and clear out. But as a dead-man’s switch we place the ring low enough that gravity and friction degrade it over a decade with no intervention.

You say: “GW will bring an increase in transpiration to counterbalance the fertilizing effects of CO2.”

I do not understand why transpiration would not enhance fertilization rather than dampen it. My thought is that CO2 at 500-600ppm could be a great ecological benefit if we control incoming sunlight and buttress shorelines for storms, which we need to do regardless.

==> If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory:… ===>

Interesting how Scott left out the “hoax” part, they’re publishing faulty science for funding and career development part, they’re just exploiting science for a political agenda part, it’s just religious fanaticism part, they are driven by guilt part, etc. I guess he’s just looked at different online discussions than the ones I’ve seen.

Also, interesting to note that he buys the “shy voter” theory, even though no one has presented solid evidence in support to justify a conclusion that it explains much by way of the electoral results. It is a convenient theory, however, so why let a lack of evidence get in the way? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence…that’s the kind of nonsense that “experts” get hung up on.

Joshua, with respect to your paragraph 1: the NRDC crop yield briefing to congress was a deliberate hoax misrepresenting a faulty paper (my first ever guest post here in 2011 shares the details), Mann published faulty science for funding, Obama and Kerry exploited science for a political agenda, the warmunist denial epithet is religious fanaticism, Klein and Oreskes are plainly both driven by liberal guilt, etc.
With respect to your second paragraph, the shy voter hypothesis explains why pollsters got it wrong, not the election result itself.

So in response to the first paragraph, you’re agreeing that Scott left out elements that are commonly found.

In response to the second paragraph, there could be myriad reasons why the polls “got it wrong,” (actually, the national vote polling average was close to if not within the margin of error). Your “explanation” lacks any actual evidence in support.

I think that the polling error was due to poor “likely voter” screens…because they are based on past voting turnout and probably a fair number of people voted in this election who hadn’t voted in previous elections.

The “shy voter” theory runs rather counter to the outcome that both Clinton and Trump outperformed the polls not in areas where their support was relatively unpopular (thus, suggesting that people would be “shy” to admit to supporting a candidate who seemed unpopular), but in areas where their support was relatively popular.

Sorry, Rud, but I find argument by assertion to be entirely unimpressive. Try bringing some evidence to the table.

In other words, Rud, you can provide no reasoned arguments why the supposed “shy” voters were “shyer” responding to pollsters where Trump was more popular, or why Clinton outperformed the polls where she was popular, or why there was no data from comparing online polling to in-person polling to support your theory?

“One by one, many of the most prominent people in the climate debate began to throw vitriolic playground abuse at me. I was “paranoid”, “specious”, “risible”, “self-defaming”, “daft”, “lying”, “irrational”, an “idiot”.”

No where near the standing of Mr. Ridley, but experienced the same behavior not from one but many on politics threads. My theory, therefore, is that this behavior is not related to the science but instead pertains to the associated politics. Experiment to ascertain the the viability performed on politics threads. Results discouragingly robust. The data runs extremely deep and pertains to participants on both sides of the debate.

Deniers offset by catastrophists. Lukewarmers offset by those more climate concerned. Not clear what happens dead center. Might be a g-spot.

Dr. Curry, thank you for the forum allowing discussion. There is an answer but the question remains uncertain.

> My theory, therefore, is that this behavior is not related to the science but instead pertains to the associated politics.

I see it more as a set of personality attributes, Danny T. I haven’t a shred of evidence to give you, just opinion based on my own experiences slumming around various Internet discussion fora over the years. IRL, people are generally more polite, so I was shocked by the online vehemence I saw when I first started exploring it.

Actually, Dr. Judith, I suspect the real problem is not that you and the others are climate heretics. The issue is that you are climate apostates—someone who used to believe, but now speaks out against what they used to believe. That’s the worst. If you never believed, that’s passable. But if you were one of the chosen few, and now you speak in any form against your former affiliation, you are the embodiment of evil.

As regards the hatred of apostates, the climate establishment is much like Islam. Islam says that apostates deserve one of four fates: execution, exile, crucifixion, or having a hand and a foot lopped off on opposite sides of the body. It is because of this hatred of apostates that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to live with bodyguards and Salman Rushdie got death threats …

Gotta love it when the attack-dog section of the media, and far too many of the mainstream US climate scientists, are modeling their behavior on one of the most brutal aspects of Islam … I didn’t see that one coming.

‘As regards the hatred of apostates, the climate
establishment is much like Islam. Islam says that
apostates deserve one of four fates: execution,
exile, crucifixion, or having a hand and a foot
lopped off on opposite sides of the body. It is
because of this hatred of apostates that Ayaan
Hirsi Ali has to live with bodyguards and Salman
Rushdie got death threats …’

Oh Shukla! Oh RICO!
The difference betwixt The Enlightenment
and what preceded it was that heretics,
likewise ‘witches,’ weren’t required to git
burned at the stake.

Good points! Never believers are merely deplorables and can be dismissed out of hand by the PC Consensus. However, as in Islam, former believers must be dealt with harshly less their heresy become a cancer on the body of the faithful.

We have an exact Analogy Whereby the EU is determined to make an example of Britain as a punishment for daring to want to leave their corrupt club and to serve as a lesson to anyone else thinking about it.

Regarding RPjr.’s op-ed… and because (despite some of the typical flaws that characterize much of his analyses) Brandon deserves some credit for exhibiting some internal consistencies that is so rare in the online discussion of climate change:

I find that I am treated like a heretic on this site for saying that manmade forcing dominates natural forcing and that the mean imbalance is in all likelihood positive. It comes down to what statements you stand by or stand against. A heretic isn’t someone who says “I just don’t know”.

No Jim2. I don’t perceive that he ‘needs’ any ‘snowflakes’. Just made a statement that in part why he’s treated as a ‘heretic’ is due to his political alignment. Having just experienced such treatment because I don’t agree with the likes of you politically and witnessing how you’re not being capable of reasonable disagreement but instead find the need to stoop to commentary such as you’ve just presented is evidence. Safe spaces & lefty loony all in one post of yours? Just juvenile behavior and you’re quite good at it. Soon someone will come along and call me a Social Justice Warrior for pointing it out.

You know Josh has pushed that stoopid it’s all political argument. ( of course you do J jr). It is intellectually lazy.

Jim D gets a lot of push back because he repeatedly makes statements as if they were incontrovertible fact, when they are nothing of the sort. But he is persistent, honest and does not resort to personal attack. In that last he is a better person than I am. You might try emulating the honest characteristic Danny.

One additional point Danny. I for one don’t have a clue what Jim D’s political opinions are.

He stands his ground like a true believer. Logic, reason and fact do not diminish his belief. And if he is on the right side according to history, who knows, he may be remembered along the same vein as early Christian martyrs.

But we have exceeded the rate of change that previously occurred
==============
nope.

“The Younger Dryas is a geological period from c. 12,900 to c. 11,700 calendar years ago… The change was relatively sudden, taking place in decades, and resulted in a decline of 2 to 6 degrees”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

Jim D | December 6, 2016 at 12:38 am | Reply
“I am treated like a heretic on this site for saying that manmade forcing dominates natural forcing and that the mean imbalance is in all likelihood positive”
Statement of fact Jim D, and obviously not a complaint.
Firstly you deny that natural forcing exists and you deny any negative feedbacks exist.
Personally I find your views and intransigence refreshing and enlightening and am very happy to have you commentating here forever.
You are rarely [never] rude and always able to find a circularity in an argument, unfortunately usually your own.
You are a welcome and much needed member of the team.

Tonyb
The climate has natural variation.
However it doesn’t add TW of energy to the oceans at the same time as Solar is steadily reducing.
Short of “under-floor” heating that is.
And please don,t resort to denying the ARGO data.
Or the unproven hypothesis of cloud feedback.

I have never denied The Argo data, indeed you will have seen me supporting the notion of more Argo buoys at greater depths which I discussed with Tomas stocker a couple of years ago. The more data the better especially on the very under sampled oceans.

As far as clouds go, yes it’s unproven and uncertain like much, but obviously not all, of climate science.

climatereason, yes, the climate varies naturally. We see and understand these fairly well, from Ice Ages to longer term paleoclimate driven by volcanic and other geological processes that affect GHGs. It is precisely because of paleoclimate that we know that GHGs have such an effect. We are headed towards CO2 levels last seen before glaciers existed tens of millions of years ago, but some here don’t consider this to be a factor to consider which I find remarkable.

“Paleoclimate” shows CO2 lagging warm periods. The reason why may be unknown (but actually the hypothesis for it is well founded), but the data is unarguable. You cannot have a cause that is preceded by its effect.

I agree with Jim D, that climate does change naturally, and that we have yet to exceed previous limits of natural varialbility.

But we have exceeded the rate of change that previously occurred, and are on a path to exceed previous hot house climates of the past, but I believe we will come to grips with that and take effective action before that happens.

Would have liked to listen in to what Al and Donald were talking about.

This is a reply to bobdroege | December 6, 2016 at 1:17 pm |
‘I agree with Jim D, that climate does change naturally, and that we have yet to exceed previous limits of natural varialbility. But we have exceeded the rate of change that previously occurred…’ Bob: how do you know that ‘.,..we have exceeded the rate of change that previously occurred’?

Of course not, philjourdan. But you can have a molecule with multiple physical properties, and thus multiple effects on or responses to its surroundings. CO2 happens to be absolutely non-unique in that respect.

We need not limit ourselves to chemistry to understand the implications of multiple parameters for a single molecular species in equilibrium systems:

But then we are not talking about multiple properties, just one property. And the lag of CO2 to temperature rise is indisputable. Ergo, historically, rising CO2 is not a cause of the warming in the past, but a result OF warming in the past

Periods in paleoclimate had CO2 rises due to volcanic activity, and the temperature rose along with it. No one argues that the temperature rise caused the volcanoes. What we are doing today is like those volcanoes did in the past, but much faster.

Molecules are not animate life forms. We are still only talking about one property, regardless of how you want to micro divide it. The data is there. Until they find that “Chroniton” particle that allows future events to influence past facts, the data is still irrefutable. Effect cannot precede cause. If you have evidence showing otherwise, please present it to the world! The world is waiting for a predictive element that can be changed in the present to affect the past.

We need not limit ourselves to chemistry to understand the implications of multiple parameters for a single molecular species in equilibrium systems

Since you’ve again failed to answer a simple and direct question, let’s try different some different ones:

1) If the Canada lynx population was eliminated from the environment, would you expect the snowshoe rabbit population to increase, decrease or stay the same?
2) If the snowshoe rabbit population was eliminated from the environment, would you expect the Canada lynx population to increase, decrease or stay the same?

And just for kicks:

3) As CO2 concentration increases, do you expect green plant growth to increase, decrease or stay the same?

That last one should dispense with any further objections about molecules not being animate life forms.

> We are still only talking about one property, regardless of how you want to micro divide it.

Mixing ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere is a statistic, not a property of the molecule. And this …

1) Its partial pressure in oceanic/terrestrial reservoirs as a function of temperature.
2) Its radiative properties in the atmosphere as a function of its mixing ratio.

… is not a micro-division, it’s a gross oversimplification — just not as grossly oversimplified as your insistence that there’s only one relevant physical property of CO2 to consider here.

In my book JimD you are honestly and politely putting your POV forward notwithstanding that the majority of commenters here disagree and have sometimes been rude to you personally.

If it were not for your efforts and that of a few others, Judith’s site would run the risk of being an echo chamber for the sceptical. Its always important that a diversity of views can be accessed by readers. and that we can judge for ourselves the merits (or lack thereof) of these views.

“If it were not for your efforts and that of a few others, Judith’s site would run the risk of being an echo chamber for the sceptical.”

As if the “scepitcal” are like-minded and always in agreement. That said, I think your comment is spot on. Jim D., has always been polite to me and has always (seemingly) been earnest in his efforts. His absence from this site, in my arrogant opinion, would be a tragedy and I, for one, would miss the hell out of him.

Reply to Peter M Davies: agreed. As one happy to be regarded as a ‘climate d’nier’ or ‘leftie agitator’ or whatever, I too value the diversity of opinion expressed on Dr Curry’s site. I look forward to Mosher’s sometimes incoherent yells of protest as much as I do to Nick Stokes’ pointed and usually searching questions.
What is heresy one day can be orthodoxy the next, and v.v. There will always be things that many people sincerely believe or reject despite lack of evidence and/or contrary evidence. JimD, like many others, seems to accept, or at least not question, the authority of the IPCC. As a scientist, I insist that it must be questioned, whether or not JimD does so. Without questioning, progress stops.

I appreciate the support from those who expressed it above.
I mainly said it because wanted to draw a distinction between someone who says “we just don’t know” and someone who considers a “very likely” statement by the IPCC, supported by data and forcing considerations, as instead “very likely wrong”. The people here seem to fall into both camps and sometimes shift between them without realizing it.

Jim D, well said. We are frequently fighting over statements; we should concentrate on facts. Take an IPCC “very likely” statement: what level of confidence does it represent? How many sigmas? That would be an exact number, but that’s not how IPCC works. They use some other mechanism – probably a vote by carefully selected experts. If you happen to know, please share your knowledge.

manmade forcing dominates natural forcing
For the global mean top of the atmosphere, GHG RF likely imposes a 1 to 2 percent change.
But climate is not defined by this or even by global warming.
Climate involves the general circulation.

So, for Global RF, I’d probably agree that manmade forcing dominates natural forcing ( though no one can know what albedo was or how it changed ).

For Climate, natural forcing dominates and it’s not clear that RF or resultant mean temperature change is even significant.

You are in effect saying that the temperature rise with the forcing change in the last century is coincidental and unconnected.

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there is a mean temperature and there are real temperatures determined by dynamic circulation. Mean temperatures probably are increasing with the global RF change. Real daily temperatures ( and winds, and storms, and precipitation, etc. ) are determined by circulation ( like the recent Arctic outbreak ). The temperature changes from day to day circulation can be 20C or more – ten times larger than a CO2 doubling. The rise in mean temperature doesn’t determine the circulation so rising mean temperature is particularly significant.

No, they are not, well okay, maybe a 0.1F in afternoon temps, but other than that, active temperature regulation at night it doesn’t matter.

Just like deserts still get cold at night.This is the environment that is the most affected by co2, it has the lowest humidity and the highest natural forcing to illuminate any co2 in the atmosphere, get the biggest back radiation on earth. And at night temps still drop like a rock.

The mean summer temperature in the US could increase by 3-4 standard deviations by 2100. This means that an extreme hot summer today (a 3-sigma or 50-year event) would be just average in 2100, and their extremes would be nothing we have ever seen. So just dismissing a mean change of a few degrees is missing rather a large piece of climate change, which is seasonal temperatures. This is excluding potential tipping points like Hansen’s Greenland meltwater pulse scenario that cools Europe and raises sea levels faster.

The mean summer temperature in the US could increase by 3-4 standard deviations by 2100. This means that an extreme hot summer today (a 3-sigma or 50-year event) would be just average in 2100, and their extremes would be nothing we have ever seen.

Such things are certainly not validated by any observations. If Judith should accept it, watch for a guest post on this subject soon.

So just dismissing a mean change of a few degrees is missing rather a large piece of climate change, which is seasonal temperatures. This is excluding potential tipping points like Hansen’s Greenland meltwater pulse scenario that cools Europe and raises sea levels faster.

Neither is validated but both are ironically accepted by the excitable climate industry because they are used to imply CAGW. That is part of the problem – a real phenomenon – Radiative Forcing – is used to insinuate other changes, sometimes by crazy unsubstantiated ideas.

Exactly. A heretic has assertions that diverge from the norm. In the case of Judith, she says to IPCC scientists “you don’t know that it is very likely”, which is a bit different and more confrontational than “I don’t know whether it is very likely”.

A heretic has assertions that diverge from the norm.
Hmmm. Heresy is a religious term, perhaps appropriate to climate, but only because there are unknowables wrt climate that people tend to fill in with emotion as they do with religion.

In the case of Judith, she says to IPCC scientists “you don’t know that it is very likely”, which is a bit different and more confrontational than “I don’t know whether it is very likely”.

The IPCC makes assertions about outcomes which are untested hypotheses. And just like governments that go into debt because the leaders won’t be around to answer for the debt payback, it’s easy to make predictions about the year 2100, because the predictor won’t be around to answer for their claims.

They give their uncertainty ranges. If you don’t like their ranges, produce your own and the methodology for coming up with them. Take a scenario such as 6 W/m2 for 2100 and give a temperature range for that, and your basis for it. Just dismissing things is not science. Science is pushing in your own direction and putting forwards arguments.

The real ‘heretic’ in this stupid cesspool of Judy’s is Mosher — he started out a skeptic, then actually worked with the ‘problematic’ data… and found himself convinced. And now he schools you guys on a regular basis.

Your assumption as failed you. If you have the comment I am responding to deleted it appears as if my quotations of your words will mean my comment gets deleted too.

Certainly one could take your decision to have your comment removed as conceding the argument, but if there is no acknowledgement that the point has been conceded, then, whether you’ve intended to or not, you have managed to erase your own faulty argument as well as the argument that convinced you your argument was flawed and everyone is none the wiser.

There ain’t nothing wrong with being wrong. There’s plenty wrong with refusing to admit being wrong when wrong. I have long admired Steven’s dogged attempts to get skeptics to act more like skeptics and I cannot tell you how utterly disappointed to discover that…in between making calls for reason, Steven endeavors to silence reason.

When Steven say’s read harder, you cannot read what Steven has had deleted.

Here’s to hoping that the Age of Trump will herald the demise of climate change dogma and acceptance of a broader range of perspectives on climate science and our policy options .

Here! Here! to that. The broader range will need to include a major focus on researching and quantifying the damage function and its uncertainties. There can be no valid justification for public expenditure on GHG abatement policies without valid evidence that GHG emissions are harmful. To date the assertions about damaging GHG emissions are based largely on assertions and innuendo https://judithcurry.com/2016/11/25/week-in-review-science-and-policy-edition-3/#comment-826495

Marvelous compilation- thanks. The credibility of all earth sciences have suffered mightily from the legions of gravy-trainers feeding from the taxpayer’s trough while fully aware that the “C” in CAGW is a potpourri of data-rigging, FOIA/PR subversion and lies. It is time for truth…

I have a feeling that ‘climate change’ is falling apart. Several reasons. First, James Hansen and his support of nuclear energy and ridicule of Paris. Second, Obama pipes up every now and then and gives us a lecture ‘shame on you’. He’s history! Third, most people have little interest in it. It’s way down on the interest list. It was barely mentioned during the election.

A few more cold winters and it’s Meh for ‘climate change’. You wounded warriors will then truly wonder was it worth it. It reminds me of some lyrics in a John Lennon song: “Well I’d like to tell my story but you don’t wanna hear about the war” from: ‘I’m an old forgotten soldier’

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the tropical Pacific Ocean remains neutral (neither El Niño nor La Niña). Although some very weak La Niña-like patterns continue (such as cooler than normal ocean temperatures and reduced cloudiness in the central and eastern Pacific), La Niña thresholds have not been met. Climate models and current observations suggest these patterns will not persist. The likelihood of La Niña developing in the coming months is now low, and hence the Bureau’s ENSO Outlook has shifted from La Niña WATCH to INACTIVE.

I agree. Here’s another reason to add to yours. None of the climate alarmists who blog on CE responded to the eight comments I posted at the top of this recent thread https://judithcurry.com/2016/11/25/week-in-review-science-and-policy-edition-3/#comment-826495 . The comments are about impacts and the damage function which is essential to any attempt to justify the belief that GHG emissions are dangerous. The fact the CE alarmists dodged this is telling. It suggests they have no answer and can’t defend their justifications for their climate alarmism.

” The comments are about impacts and the damage function which is essential to any attempt to justify the belief that GHG emissions are dangerous. The fact the CE alarmists dodged this is telling. It suggests they have no answer and can’t defend their justifications for their climate alarmism.”

Please link me to where in the IPCC reports it says that ECS is anything other than between 1.5 and 4.5C?
1.5 isn’t alarming (tho we are already at 1).
4.5C certainly is alarming.
In case you haven’t twigged – that’s a range of uncertainty.
CAGW is an invention of *sceptics*.

Oh, and don’t take any meaning from the science side not answering you.
Contrary to your belief we have lives and are far outnumbered on this *sceptic* blog.
It matters not a jot anyway.
As Mosher says…..
Science isn’t done or policy decided on what is written here.

I’ll continue to soap box this –
Beyond the fact that alarm is an emotion, not science,
How does a global average temperature relate to actual climate?
Reacting to any GAT number carries implicit underlying assumptions, an increasing number of which appear to be invalid. The general circulation, which largely determines climate, is not determined by GAT.

Below are small but typical snippets of a voluminous narrative from world leaders, governments and other authorities plus orgs. Presumably you don’t hold the view that all the influential Western leaders represented in this sample are skeptics? Assuming not, I’m interested to know in what way you think the certain, urgent (apparently soon irrevocable), global, calamitous nature of the issue as framed in their narrative, is not consistent with the abbreviation used by some to indicate the concept of an unwarranted certainty regarding near-term (decades) climate catastrophe, i.e. ‘CAGW’. (a while ago I checked all these quotes back to what appeared to be decent sources, so I believe they’re accurate). Or do you have some different interpretation of what ‘CAGW’ means?

[GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND] to 15th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development : “So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act.” [OBAMA] Energy Independence and the Safety of Our Planet (2006) : “All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.” Speech in Berlin (2008) : “This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.” George town speech (2013) : “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.” State of the Union (2015) : “The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe.” [FRANCOIS HOLLANDE] Paris climate summit Nov 2015 : “To resolve the climate crisis, good will, statements of intent are not enough. We are at breaking point.” [GORDON BROWN] Copenhagen climate plan (2009) : “If we miss this opportunity, there will be no second chance sometime in the future, no later way to undo the catastrophic damage to the environment we will cause…As scientists spell out the mounting evidence both of the climate change already occurring and of the threat it poses in the future, we cannot allow the negotiations to run out of time simply for lack of attention. Failure would be unforgivable.” [ANGELA MERKEL] to UN summit on Climate Change (2009) : “After all, scientific findings leave us in no doubt that climate change is accelerating. It threatens our well being, our security, and our economic development. It will lead to uncontrollable risks and dramatic damage if we do not take resolute countermeasures.” Same speech : “we will need to reach an understanding on central issues in the weeks ahead before Copenhagen, ensuring, among other things, that global emissions reach their peak in the year 2020 at the latest.” And while president of the EU, on German TV in a wake-up call for climate action prior to 26 leader EU climate meeting (2007) : “It is not five minutes to midnight. It’s five minutes after midnight.” [POPE FRANCIS] Asked if the U.N. climate summit in Paris (2015) would mark a turning point in the fight against global warming, the pope said: “I am not sure, but I can say to you ‘now or never’. Every year the problems are getting worse. We are at the limits. If I may use a strong word I would say that we are at the limits of suicide.”

And you can tell that because there’s no way to compare an actual measurement to the GAT and tell if the GAT or temp are off.

This is my argument with Mosher about BEST’s out of band testing. He has stated they get their temp based on lat and alt and a bit of adjustment if near the coast, these are all calculations, if the original Gates is created by transforming the measurements used into a formula, to do out of band testing you have to take your out of band data and transform it, and you are no longer doing out of band testing. You never actually compare your formula to measurement.

I don’t get involved in the arguments over how average temps are calculated. My point was far simpler. Knowing what number the GAT is doesn’t tell us anything, even if it were accurate to a tenth of a degree. At best it can tell you over time if it is trending in one direction or another, or not trending at all. And even that may not be all that useful because of natural cycles, some of which are of very long duration.

But let’s say we all accept it is rising and the rise is independent of natural cycles. Knowing the GAT will tell us exactly zero about climate where climate matters, which is locally and regionally.

Aside from the now rapidly cooling 2015-16 El Nino blip, there has been no statistically significant warming this century except by Karlization. And about 1/3 off all the CO2 increase since 1958 (Keeling Curve) happened since 2000. Discuss.

Aside from the now rapidly cooling 2015-16 El Nino blip, there has been no statistically significant warming this century except by Karlization.

So you’re saying that if you cut off the warming blips, we can’t say for sure that it’s been warming? …right. (Hey, imagine how much warming we could show if we cut off the cooling blips!)

I don’t think there’s much to discuss there. Smaller sample sizes are more likely to be statistically insignificant, but that’s no surprise. Short-term periods are usually not going to show statistically significant warming. This is why “climate” is normally defined as 20-40 years, so as to meaningfully address and include the well-known short-term variations in surface temperature.

And about 1/3 off all the CO2 increase since 1958 (Keeling Curve) happened since 2000. Discuss.

CO2 doesn’t directly heat the atmosphere. Rather it causes more heat to be retained; it causes heat to leave the Earth’s system more slowly. This means that CO2 operates with a lag.

If we doubled CO2 today, then next week you might say “hey, it hasn’t warmed much yet, what’s up?”. But that slower warming would be exactly what we’d expect. It’s not magic. It works a certain way.

The new CO2 acts instantly so there is no big lag. As for cutting off the warming blips, Ristvan is referring to the as yet incomplete ENSO cycle. Trend analysis of oscillators requires that partial cycles be excluded at both ends. When this is done there is indeed no warming this century. (Did you not know this?)

CO2 starts retaining more heat instantly. But it doesn’t make the heat jump overnight, it only changes the heat flows. So yes, there’s very definitely a big lag.

This is like putting your foot on the gas pedal of a stopped car. Is there a lag in getting up to speed? Well, the gas pedal works instantly, but it doesn’t instantly accelerate you to 60 mph. So yeah, there’s a lag.

Trend analysis of oscillators requires that partial cycles be excluded at both ends.

You can’t remove a partial cycle from ENSO; ENSO is not a regular cycle like a sine wave, but a stochastic oscillation. And it’s super-imposed on top of other oscillations. So what you do is get long-enough trends that you can accurately judge statistical significance of the trends. E.g., 20-40 years, for surface temps.

When this is done there is indeed no warming this century. (Did you not know this?)

Incorrect. Check the linear trend of GISTEMP from 2000 to 2014; you’ll find it’s 0.10 +/- 0.14 C/decade. That’s warming, it’s just not statistically significant warming. Meaning, the noise over this time period is sufficiently large that you cannot tell if the warming is random or not to 95% certainty. (it’s at about 80% certainty instead). If you hold to the 95% standard for certainty, this just means that we can’t say if there is “real” warming or not. Repeat: it does not mean that there’s no warming; it means there’s insufficient data in that particular data set to tell either way.

Don’t get “no warming” mixed up with “no statistically significant warming”. They’re two very different things, and much of climate science “skepticism” relies on you not understanding mathematical concepts like statistics.

In a recent letter, Ricke and Caldeira (2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 124002) estimated that the timing between an emission and the maximum temperature response is a decade on average. In their analysis, they took into account uncertainties about the carbon cycle, the rate of ocean heat uptake and the climate sensitivity but did not consider one important uncertainty: the size of the emission. Using simulations with an Earth System Model we show that the time lag between a carbon dioxide (CO2) emission pulse and the maximum warming increases for larger pulses. Our results suggest that as CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, the full warming effect of an emission may not be felt for several decades, if not centuries. Most of the warming, however, will emerge relatively quickly, implying that CO2 emission cuts will not only benefit subsequent generations but also the generation implementing those cuts.

JCH, your comment is interesting. How do you fit these two puzzle pieces together?

#1

A nonlinear system is full of fantastic surprises and great disappointments.

#2

It is not going to get colder and colder. That is just laughable.

Unless someone just handed you the magic goggles that prevent “fantastic surprises and great disappointments”, neither you nor anyone knows what the climate will do over the next decade. If you did, you’d be rich.

ATTP has noted the unfair attack on Roger as well and has a good post on it at his blog if anyone is interested. Seems to be doing the rounds as a meme.
The outpouring of support for Roger from the scientific community on this attack on scientists is almost deafening.
Expect Peter Gliek and Michael Mann to offer their support as well very soon. That thin green line will be absolutely overrun.

Unlike most commentators I believe that the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has no bearing on the surface temperature of the planet at whatsoever. My argument is evidence based.

Surface temperature exhibits a steep gradient of decline between the equator and the Poles and more particularly so in relation to Antarctica. At points between these extremes air temperature depends upon which way the wind is blowing. The flux in surface temperature on greater than daily time and seasonal time scales is then due to change in wind direction and intensity.To discover how and why air temperature changes we need to explain the changes that occur in the planetary winds that are in turn governed by the flux in surface pressure.

The strongest winds are not found at the surface but in the zone where the troposphere overlaps with the stratosphere. The stratosphere occupies most of the atmospheric column in high latitudes.

Low air pressure is predominantly due to the reduced density of the upper portions of the atmospheric column where ozone heats the air by absorbing the radiation from the Earth itself. The temperature of the stratosphere and the density of the upper air is very much a function of the ozone fraction that varies on all time scales. It is greatest in winter and it is at this time of the year that surface temperature is observed to vary most strongly from year to year and over longer time scales.

The failure of climate science is to come to grips with the forces responsible for the change is the winds that is part and parcel of the annular modes phenomenon.The failure to link the annular modes phenomenon with the ozone content of the air in high latitudes is terminal.

Scott Adams: “astonishingly insightful?” That’s more humorous than his cartoons, which I like a lot. Here’s some of his laughable whoppers:
“you know they always take the following trajectory.” I don’t know that because they don’t always despite his assertion. Climate debates are as varied as any political discussions I observe or participate in.
“Ask the majority of polling experts who said Trump had only a 2% chance of becoming president.’ Ridiculously wrong. Nate Silver 70/30. NYT 85/15 Many Republican pollsters…we are going to win. He made this up, a bad sign for somebody that is pretending to share authentic reality with us sheeple.
“No one is using reason, facts, or common sense to arrive at a decision about climate science.” What a blowhard. I came to Climate Audit and CE as someone worried about Climate Change. In the last five years I have absorbed an enormous amount of info from Dr. Curry, guest posters and the horde of commenters that lurk or pass through. Many display more common sense, have more facts at their disposal and come to more reasoned conclusions than Mr. Adams apparently is capable of doing. He should stick to cartooning, though I did like “God’s Debris,”

The political polls were no different than the climate model spaghetti results. Clinton was the preferred candidate by most of the pollsters, many of which are affiliated with the MSM. They are the CO2 advocates. Their assumptions (and hopes) simply didn’t measure reality. Obviously the Trump staff knew better what was happening in the real world, as evidenced by where and when they campaigned. The lesson, if there is one, is that when many factors (variables) are involved in a complicated system, it may be best not to assume any single factor is the “control knob”. Peanuts from Canada.

Becoming a political pundit is something hard for successful people to do. There’s generally a life path – go to Harvard, get an English or Poli Sci degree, slave away for a low-paying job, kiss a lot of butt, and work your way up.

One does not simply become a political pundit. Adams has become one.

[…]

Vox, a huge site with hundreds of staffers, does 33 million page views per month, via Quantcast. (Alexa is garbage. Quantcast is official.)

[…]

Adams’ is running a one-man shop, and he’s doing 10 million views.

Adams is one man, and he’s doing more page views than most media sites.

[…]

Adams is the most-read political pundit in the United States and maybe the world.

I agree with the IPCC consensus, I have no reason not to, although in terms of the transient warming (for example) there is a very large range, I think too large and this needs to be narrowed. I read your blogs on the science of climate change with interest, there is no doubt you are a distinguished scientist in my field. I agree with you that the uncertainties in future climate change need to be explained clearly and that is quite a challenge especially with all the disinformation out there. Where I disagree with you on this subject is that I think you over emphasise the uncertainty and don’t distinguish clearly enough between what is well known about man made climate change and its interaction with natural variability and what is not well known.

It’s early over here so I just dipped into the article and was astonished to learn that judith was a trained hypnotist until I realised that this part of the commentary was not hers. It’s a great image though as she answers questions in congress and everyone starts nodding n agreement….

It’s an interesting article though. For what it’s worth I think our understanding of natural variabiloty is very poor whether that concerns an evolving climate or extreme events. As you have seen any references to historic climates similar to the current one or episodes of extreme weather are dismissed as anecdotal by some here and more generally in the scientific community . There is a pile of evidence to support this but those with closed minds or an agenda refuse to consider them

There’s a post @ Jo Nova on a new climate paper about
cold European winters in the decade of the 1430’s.You
might care to comment. )

bts.

‘While searching through historical archives to find out
more about the 15th-century climate of what is now
Belgium, northern France, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands, Chantal Camenisch noticed something
odd. “I realised that there was something extraordinary
going on regarding the climate during the 1430s,” says
the historian from the University of Bern in Switzerland.’

Although it was prior to my main area of research I made the following notes about the 1430’s onwards in ‘the long slow thaw’

1431/2 A cold (possibly severe) winter in western Europe / implied parts of Britain. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) booty Every winter from 1433/4to 1437/8 described as severe. Lamb-chmw
1434/35 (may be 1433/34)
(Winter)A very severe winter: the Thames froze solid (from December to February) and was closed to shipping from Gravesend to below London Bridge, and wine had to be transported overland (or over the ice-covered Thames) from Gravesend to London. [ Some sources have this as 1433/34 ]
1442/3 A cold winter western Europe / implied parts of Britain. (Easton, in CHMW/Lamb) booty

It is gratifying to see other peoples research confirming your own, not only in this decade but also around 1540 which an article described here last week as being as hot or hotter than today which chimed with my own research.

I think what we are seeing here is the justification for my intended but much delayed article that i have termed ‘tranquility, transition and turbulence’ that will eventually cover the period from 1200 to join up to 1538 . There are periods in this that are extremely cold and some that are extremely warm with some very wild storms. This is at variance with the generally settled MWP and is a period of turbulence that I hope we never see again.

Mr. Adams,
Thank you for telling me that mortality is soon to be fixed. “On the question of fear, in my experience, any danger we humans see coming far in the future we always find a way to fix.” While the danger posed by my mortality may not be far enough in the future to fall under your comforting assertion, I’m guessing a reasonable person would assume my grandchild won’t have to worry about such things. I’m sure she’ll be glad to know when I tell her the source of this eternal wisdom.
Or maybe you are not as insightful as I was assured? Or perhaps as a commenter on “God’s Debris,” opined: “Unfortunately, when someone who — by his own admission — knows nothing about quantum physics or probability theory writes very seriously on those subjects, the result is a lot of annoying gibberish.” I wonder if that reviewer was Dilbert employing a sockpuppet?

That article prompted an intense media campaign to have me fired. Writers at Slate, Salon, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Guardian and others piled on.

The Guardians of Global Warming have little to lose if they are wrong. They will simply say that they believed what 99% of the scientists were telling them. They’ll blame the scientists which will be very very bad for science and scientists everywhere.

On the other hand, have any pollsters, writers or editors been fired over the recent US presidential election results? Maybe it’s not that the Guardians of Global Warming have little to lose but that they have nothing to lose. And in the meantime they have pages to fill and advertising to sell..

The opposite has happened. The public editor of the NYT has been attacked on twitter for having the temerity to call out journalists from her paper for mixing personal political opinion with their position as members of the 4th estate.

I love it. Apparently they don’t teach the bit about stop digging when you are in a hole

The problem with CE discussions are the same as found in almost any venue on Climate Change/Global Warming: The issue is framed in extreme views.

An example is the below graph from Pew — where the gulf between Liberals and Conservatives is huge:

Rarely is there any effort to find the “Common Ground” between Moderates (the much smaller gulf in above Pew graph).

In the past here at CE, I’ve asked the Denizens to correct my understanding of Dr. Curry — no one has done this:

Dr. Curry has repeatedly stated her Best Guess is that the human influence on Global Warming is about ~50%. Dr. Curry then clarified that this represents a range between 25% and 75% (where one would assume the average of ~50%).

The problem here at CE is that (for the most part) Dr. Curry’s above view has been “hi-jacked by the most vocal CE Denizens to mean 25% (or even less). But what about her 75% point range estimate? The most vocal types here never talk about this (and ridicule people who have this opinion as not following science).

Next we have TCR, and (my understanding) is that there is not a whole lot of difference between the Lewis/Curry estimate and Gavin Schmidt’s conservative estimate.

Within a context of her range of 25% to 75%, Dr. Curry has then written favorably on two mitigation actions: (1) Fast Mitigation of Smog, Methane, Black Carbon, HFCs; (2) Extending the life of existing nuclear power plants.

Reality check. There is no common ground between warmunist belief in CAGW (with various Cs like extinctions, SLR, crop failures, weather extremes) and reality. No common ground between faithnin high renewable penetration being viable and the realities of intermittency with consequences for backup and grid stability. No common ground between Merchants of Doubt and the uncertain realities of sound climate science like cloud feedback. So no point in seeking any.

The rate of SLR since 2013, which is when the cool phase of the stadium waved ended, is 5.9 mm/yr. Congruent with the death of the cool phase of the stadium wave. This nonlinear climate… ain’t it swell.

Jch, provide your published data for that ridiculous SLR assertion. Oh, and also the accuracy and precision specs for Jason 2, now in a failing and just replaced orbit. Try 3mm repeatability and 1mm random inatrumwnt drift, per year. Read the manual before evidencing abject instrument ignorance.

(1) It is not propaganda when a correct macro approach to Renewables is presented using integrated grid engineering economics (taught at every leading engineering school like the University of Chicago, Georgia Tech — and used by every major electric utility).

(2) It is not propaganda when things like the Agriculture “Law of Limiting Factors” is presented, illustrating that Climate Change/Global Warming presents “Wicked Problems” to Ag (and it is incorrect to simply define CO2 as plant food)

(3) It is not propaganda when “Ideas” are presented from leading Economists (eg. Nordhaus, Tol) on things like trade and climate clubs.

It is Nasty Propaganda and Bullying when good faith people like Zeke Hausfather come to CE and are verbally attacked on a personal level — explaining why there is not much objective dialogue here at CE. Rud and Others want CE to be their echo chamber.

Dr. Curry has repeatedly stated her Best Guess is that the human influence on Global Warming is about ~50%. Dr. Curry then clarified that this represents a range between 25% and 75% (where one would assume the average of ~50%).

It is worth noting that Curry’s position is actually an extreme outlier.

The IPCC give a 95% probability of being >50%, with a best guess close to 100%. So roughly we have:

IPCC range 50-150%
Curry’s range 25%-75%

Curry claims much more certainty for a much lower range.

Obviously that’s entirely inconsistent with her advocacy that the IPCC is too certain in its conclusions.

More generally, the views expressed at CE are very certain, and very extreme compared to mainstream science.

How is a best guess much more certain than a 95% probability? Skepticism of AGW is not an outlier, except among Democrats, which most academic scientists are. Your rhetorical devices are showing, and showy.

Just yesterday I was – in my country – a de facto compared to the idiot.
Just for the fact, that I quoted the paper proving (including the elaboration of outstanding scientists who agreed on consensus) that we know very little about the impact of the Sun on the climate; and that change TSI – in the cycle delayed, could have a decisive influence (not GW) of turnout severe winters in Northern and Eastern: Europe and North America (- A simulated lagged response of the North Atlantic Oscillation to the solar cycle over the period 1960–2009, Andrews, Knight and Gray (!), 2015.: “Climate models have successfully reproduced this solar cycle modulation of the NAO, although the magnitude of the effect is often considerably weaker than implied by observations.“, “Recent analyses of observations have shown that solar cycle–NAO link becomes clearer approximately three years after solar maximum and minimum. In this study, the impact of solar cycle on the NAO is investigated using an atmosphere–ocean coupled climate model.” “We show that the model produces significant NAO responses peaking several years after extrema of the solar cycle, persisting even when the solar forcing becomes neutral.” “This confirms suggestions of a further component to the solar influence on the NAO beyond direct atmospheric heating and its dynamical response. Analysis of simulated upper ocean temperature anomalies confirms that the North Atlantic Ocean provides the memory of the solar forcing required to produce the lagged NAO response.”
– Solar forcing synchronizes decadal North Atlantic climate variability, Thiéblemont et al., 2015. : “In the North Atlantic sector, the 11-year solar signal has been proposed to project on to a pattern resembling the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), with a lag of a few years due to ocean-atmosphere interactions.” “…comparison of both experiments suggests that the 11-year solar cycle synchronizes quasi-decadal NAO variability intrinsic to the model.“.)

Of course, my adversaries mainly focused on finding (out of context) “cherries” with my oldest comments from 2007-9 … Polemicize – also mainly – with them, not with my last comments …
But yet most of the paper, eg. about Holocene climate optimum, “speaks” of the existence of (at the “warm” time) “equable climate” – without catastrophic heat waves, superstorms, etc.

Prominent ecologist and a theoretician of basis for the use of scientific method – not only in our country; J. Weiner said: “Consensus exists only within a certain timeframe, ie. until when it will not replace […] the new consensus. Consensus is not a timeless axiom – dogma. “

This is a telling point. The IPCC science tends not to be extreme or disastrous. But citing the non-disasters of the IPCC inflames the worse than expected emotions of the climate excitable who ironically reject the settled science.

“The truly astonishing thing about all this is how little climate heretics – such as myself, Roger Pielke, and Matt Ridley – actually diverge from the consensus science position”

Yes, that is where you are wrong. All three of you greatly overestimate the impact of CO2. I applaud you for being brave enough to step away from the crowd, but apparently you are not analytical enough to realize that the impact of anthropogenic CO2 is next to nothing.

The more people work in this field, and the better they understand the basic science, the closer to the mainstream views they hue.

If you have new data that overturns the tens of millions of man-hours that have gone into this, then by all means, present it. But, if you’re like other deniers, you haven’t even learned the textbook science, much less done new research to overturn it.

So, no, people aren’t going to come around to your view, because it’s almost certainly wrong.

Good article. I like Scott Adam’s contribution. “What you really want to know is whether climate change looks more like the sort of thing that turns out to be right or the sort of thing that turns out to be wrong.”
Indeed. The truth is that the climate science Narrative is made of a number of pieces, pretty much all of which need to be true in order for severe mitigation (as proposed by all liberal politicians) to be a good idea. Some of those pieces like “the earth’s average temperature has gone up __ over the last century” are by now well supported, though there was legimitate question about them earlier (UHIs). Others remain fuzzy (TCR, ecology, etc.). Some are completely non-consensus (the economics and politics).
Seems like we could use a re-cap of Dr. Curry’s Italian Flag articles, updated.

Scott Adams:
“As regular readers of this blog already know, human brains did not evolve to understand reality in any deep way.”

I guess that must sum up the the value of the blog content.

“On the question of trusting experts, my frame of reference is the field of influence and persuasion. From my point of view – and given the examples of mass delusion that I have personally witnessed (including Trump’s election), I see experts as far less credible than most people assume.
And when it comes to pattern recognition, I see the climate science skeptics within the scientific community as being similar to Shy Trump Supporters.”

A rather tortured and unpersuasive piece of ‘othering’ that confuses the so called experts with the sceptics.

“If science is right, and the danger is real, we’ll find ways to scrub the atmosphere as needed.”

That’s one side of climate change, and only a theoretical one, in the LIA in Estonia they ate the dead to survive.

Doesn’t seem like you listened to his points. He’s asking a sensible question: How do I know who to listen to? – I’m not an expert, I’m not going to study the details of the math, or I can’t.
The usual answer is, Accept the consensus of most of the experts. He wants to know when that’s not the right answer.
He didn’t mention it, but there are plenty of fields where hardly anyone outside them “accepts the consensus”. Gender studies, ethnic studies, some parts of sociology, stuff like that. The rest of humanity takes the attitude that these clowns aren’t really doing science at all, because they aren’t. They are just playing games within their little cliques.
So I would rephrase Adam’s question: Is climate science like physics, or is it like gender studies, and how does one tell?
The right answer is that it depends. There are a lot of pieces to the topic, stretching from measurement to model design to ecology to economics, and “climate scientists” are generally experts in one tiny corner or another. I expect that Adam’s rule will hold up pretty well: Where there is powerful preference for a particular result, that result cannot be trusted. Where climate scientists are able to do their jobs unthreatened, the results will probably be pretty good.

I guess I’d add that there are already parts of climate science where we already know which kind of science it is. Hockey Stick paleo is a good example. No matter how many times partisans claim that “the results have held up very well after a dozen studies confirming it”, anyone who has followed the history knows better. [I’ll leave it to the actual experts here to say whether I got this right. Mosher, you there?]
Measurement/UHI is another example, this time where the results went the other way, supporting the consensus – again, no matter how many times partisans claim otherwise.

I would say that the othering was being heavily reinforced in the following two paragraphs…

“While it is true that a scientist can become famous and make a big difference by bucking conventional wisdom and proving a new theory, anything short of total certainty would make that a suicide mission. And climate science doesn’t provide the option of total certainty.

To put it another way, it would be easy for a physicist to buck the majority by showing that her math worked. Math is math. But if your science depends on human judgement to decide which measurements to include and which ones to “tune,” you don’t have that option. Being a rebel theoretical physicist is relatively easy if your numbers add up. But being a rebel climate scientist is just plain stupid. So don’t expect to see many of the latter. Scientists can often be wrong, but rarely are they stupid.”

mike, on trusting the experts, Freeman Dyson said this:
“The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find Goklany’s evidence convincing. . .That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?”

Much like others, I have found attacks on scientists who appeared to be eminently qualified distasteful. A pervasive atmosphere of we against them is what motivated me to do additional research so I could understand more about global warming.

My major complaint is that there is so much certainty when it appears less is warranted.

Below is just a small example of how much uncertainty one researcher has in his field of SLR. I wonder if it is emblematic of how a lot of climate scientists do their job but are ignored.

Here are a few quotes from a study and the supplemental studies that I just happened to read yesterday. The author and subject are not important. I just want to bring out how much apparent uncertainty there is.

“The acceleration in the long term trend…is difficult to isolate from transient acceleration due to variability, particularly the 60 year cycle…”

I was making a generic comment about difficulties in establishing facts and reliable data and sound projections. I wasn’t suggesting anything about the particular study or even SLR. It was just a commentary about climate science and how one scientist was forthright about how many challenges there were in determining any trends that he was working on.

While looking at this study and others, I came across the Jevrejeva 2008 study (maybe for the umpteenth time) and it reminded me that he had said the fastest sea level rise of the 20th century was during the 1920-50 period. Nothing like getting a little real every once in a while reading Jevrejeva. When I was looking at the other studies yesterday, I also found one that alluded to the inherent difficulties using the altimetry data. If I knew you were going to link the usual CU graph I would have saved it. But I was not that prescient.

Ohh, so no consensus, on that point anyway. Interesting that you have included graphs by and links from the same author over the years ad nauseam. All of which should introduce more evidence for uncertainties, the cornerstone of every scientific endeavor.

Say the circulation slows. Less cool water comes to the surface. While the water not coming to surface isn’t warmed, the water near the surface is. Whether you warm this water or that water, it should all balance out. Sea level rise is influenced
by the transmission of warmth from the oceans to the atmosphere. Red ocean anomaly plots should be showing a reduction of sea level rise.

What might help explain the confusion with the subject is clouds.

Open region.

Closed region.
The clouds in this region seem to reinforce what I said about transmission.

Ragnaar – when El Niño begins, sea level along the coastlines of the Western Pacific generally drops, and eventually sea level along the Eastern Pacific goes up as the water sloshes over to that side of the ocean.

2008 to now, that is the dominant trend.

There was a paper that suggest this iteration my be persistent on the Eastern Pacific.

Sea level has now stayed well above trend for a quite awahile. December could see it return to trend, maybe even dip below a bit, but the current ENSO forecast will send it right back above trend by Feb-March. The highest sea level was probably reached in Feb 2016.

Say warmed water sinks. Still contributing to sea level rise. Warm water at 10 meters or 1000 meters still occupies more volume. Now it is possible pressure at 1000 meters squeezes warm water to a lessor volume and then my whole theory may be wrong. With a strong La Nina upwelling we may have water that is easier to warm. Based on the thought that 0.0 C sea water at the equator will warm easier than 30.0 C seawater. It will emit less warmth to the surface. With constant sunlight in it should hoard more warmth while cooling the atmosphere when compared to warmer water.

La Ninas seem to warm the ocean causing volume expansion. A large IPWP would seem to cause more sea level rise. What about healthy Pacific Gyre rotations? In the NH warm water goes North losing warmth and volume. Cool water goes South gaining warmth and volume. Like simultaneous El Nino and La Nina. Reduced Gyre rotations. Northern water stays the same however, assume sea ice forms because of reduced warm Southern water up there. Ice insulates and retains warmth, increasing volume. Equatorial water being warm emits more warmth to the atmosphere. Its storage of warmth is limited by how warm that seawater is.

While it might be obvious to others, I guess seaice lose reduces sea level rise by cooling the oceans.

The word “propaganda” has not yet been mentioned in this post. The spirit of Dr. Goebbels must be smiling if it can look at the world in 2016. He should be considered a founding father of the IPCC. And maybe of other institutions as well; take Nobelists Yasser Arafat, Al Gore, Barack Obama, IPCC, and Paul Krugman.

There is a special issue of The Economist called The World in 2017. (As per predictions of the staff). It is full of gems like “a real-life bully has been elected to the world’s most powerful bully pulpit.” I won’t renew my subscription.

Ivanka and her three babies will make Al Gore a frequent visitor to the Oval Office, and by the end of 2017, which is shaping up to be very warm, the rats from the conservative think tanks will be walled off and sidelined.

What is interesting about all three is the extent to which very bad progressive/warmunist behavior is being publicly unmasked. Rather like Climategate, except in a different sphere than the science per se. One thing to watch in the next month is the courts demand that Scheiderman comply with the CEI FOI demand concerning the ExxonMonil witch hunt. More very bad behavior will be exposed.

Anecdotal observation from real life.
(I think anecdotal gets a bad rap…I offer up Kip’s observations of Trump signs in NY)
Anyways … a friend, a high end financial attorney with a paper subscription to the WSJ, cut out the Pielke article and brought it to me as she was aware of my skepticism.
She was the not least bit interested in reading the article herself because in her view people who doubt climate change are uneducated, right wing, Trump voting kooks (accurate in my case).
The cultural lines are drawn.
The wave form has collapsed.

There is no heresy in falsifying (refutation of) scientific hypothesis, or even of so far accepted theories. Such critical thinking is essential to the scientific method.

Dogma are founded on irrefutable beliefs or conviction. They are the manifestation of a stalled intelligence. AGW is not a theory, it is a dogma.
Any person not adopting fully the dogma will be considered as a hateful heretic. He or she will be denied any parcel of humanity, which make less remorseful her or his elimination.
In the climate non-debate we are pretty close to such situation. Climate-AGW-credulous have already gone over this line (not green or red, but rather brown), at least verbally.

I postulated my heresy since more than 4 years. It consists in:
a) Putting in evidence the absence of evidences: no direct forcing observation, no valid correlations, no direct manifestation of its sensitivity.
b) Refuting models as invalid, incapable to reconstruct correctly the current climate evolution, but nevertheless used to estimate climate sensitivity or to construct vastly exaggerated story-making.
c) Refusing the damage only orientation of all assessments of climate change.
d) Rejecting the drastic decarbonation demands as futile (no significant effect), out of target, economically damaging, and totally unjust for the population having much more important and urgent needs.
e) Inferring that the true motive of climate activists, fully aware of the very likely ascientific basis of their arguments, are not linked with any concern for the well-being of the humanity and of the environment.
f) Preferring to adapt to climate change as it will develop, rather than to believe in human bad influence on it, and in a possible redemption by coerced decarbonization of the World.
g) And now asking the parliament of my country, Switzerland, to not ratify the Paris agreement, or at least to submit it to a referendum vote as we are used to do for much less important issues.

“Cultural evolution was enabled by spoken languages and tribal loyalties. Tribe competed with tribe and culture with culture. The cultures that prevailed were those that promoted tribal cohesion. Humans were always social animals, and culture made us even more social. We evolved to feel at home in a group that thinks alike. It was more important for a group of humans to be united than to be right. It was always dangerous and usually undesirable to question authority. When authority was seriously threatened, heretics were burned at the stake. ”

“I am suggesting that the thinking of politicians and scientists about controversial issues today is still tribal. Science and politics are not essentially different from other aspects of human culture. Science and politics are products of cultural evolution. Thinking about scientific questions is still presented to the public as a competitive sport with winners and losers. For players of the sport with public reputations to defend, it is more important to belong to a winning team than to examine the evidence. ”

“Cultural evolution was centered for a hundred thousand years on tales told by elders to children sitting around the cave fire. That cave-fire evolution gave us brains that are wonderfully sensitive to fable and fantasy, but insensitive to facts and figures. To enable a tribe to prevail in the harsh world of predators and prey, it was helpful to have brains with strong emotional bonding to shared songs and stories. It was not helpful to have brains questioning whether the stories were true. Our scientists and politicians of the modern age evolved recently from the cave-children. They still, as Charles Darwin remarked about human beings in general, bear the indelible stamp of their lowly origin.”

Hi Ron,
A few points of refutation:
1) Only a small percent of proto-humans have ever lived in caves. We find much of the evidence for pre-historic man in caves because it is an excellent place to preserve it. Having explored many caves I can assure you they are fairly rare, as were cave-children. An anthropologist would laugh at Mr. Dyson’s comic book concept of pre-historic man and their cultural evolution.
2) Common sense tells us most cultural evolution does not occur around a fire. While stories around campfires are important in some circumstances, cultural evolution by and large occurs during the day, doing the endless things involved in the details of the culture; making things, hunting things, and gathering things, Building shelters, creating tools, , demonstrating the gathering and use of medicinal plants, are not passed on by gramps chattering at night. I’d suggest Mr. Dyson should stick to the fields he is competent in.
.

climatereason / tonyb:“For what it’s worth I think our understanding of natural variability is very poor whether that concerns an evolving climate or extreme events.”

The Central England Temperature (CET) record indicates there were regional increases in temperature in central England in the 1700’s which approached + 0.3 C per decade locally and which lasted three or more decades.

Has anyone done serious research to determine if any written or physical evidence exists from that time concerning what kinds of environmental impacts, human health impacts, and societal impacts these rapid increases in local temperature might have produced, either positive or negative?

It covers also the 1730’s Which, until the 1990’s, was the warmest decade in the record. There is a link to an addendum which provides numerous reports on conditions of the time.

The obvious benefits were greatly improved farming, better crops and a rising standard of living. The downsides were the witch hunts as climate changed and the advent of malaria as the climate warmed. There were also periodically, considerable flooding and violent storms

Maybe you could start a petition to that effect. When you collect a hundred million votes or so, get back to me. I’ll reconsider my previous decision to decline accepting the position of science advisor – if offered, of course.

You might like to provide some evidence of the esteem in which your opinions are held by anyone in a position of power. I wouldn’t want to waste my time based on the fantasies of a delusional psychotic.

My personal opinion is you would be better tasked at improving your forecasting business – meaning pushing for a shift in funding and research from GCM’s to more useful regional forecasts. That shows far more opportunity to benefit humanity than the crap we spend billions on now.

“Did you ever notice how so called skeptics make wild claims and never qualify their claims with any sense of uncertainty.”

Now contrast

“So if I were to ask “Steven, why do you always have to respond like such a pathetic contemptuous ahole?” … that’s just a simple question and not an attack?”

######################################
Can you spot the difference Willis?

Sure. You wrote one attack, and I wrote the other.

Saying “skeptics make wild claims” and that they “ never qualify their claims” IS AN ATTACK, Steven, even if you don’t realize it.

In particular, the lack of any qualification of your all-encompassing claim that skeptics “NEVER qualify their claims” is frickin’ hilarious, Ouroboros would be very proud of you … but it’s still an attack.

A fair criticism. It’d be more accurate to say that skeptics rarely quantify their claims or provide data to back up their arguments.

Still, I thought the subtext was pretty obvious there: Mosher was challenging Bastardi to back up his empty words with solid data. And rather than focus on that objective lack of scientific facts, this has turned into another game of ClimateBall.

Facts. Focus on the facts. When you do that, it’s pretty plain that Bastardi’s got nothin’.

A fair criticism. It’d be more accurate to say that skeptics rarely quantify their claims or provide data to back up their arguments.

Still, I thought the subtext was pretty obvious there: Mosher was challenging Bastardi to back up his empty words with solid data.

Yes, and I was challenging Mosher to back up his empty words about skeptics. Is there a mystery here? Mosher is doing exactly what he is accusing others of doing.

On my planet such bald-faced hypocrisy, combined with his sneers of “alt-science”, are worth pointing out. Sorry if this offends you ..

Here’s the bizarre part. You;re doing exactly what Mosher did, going on the attack with just the same circular lunacy.

You are saying that “rarely quantify their claims or provide data to back up their arguments”, but you are accusing them of wrongdoing WITHOUT QUANTIFYING YOUR OWN CLAIM OR PROVIDING DATA TO BACK UP YOUR OWN ARGUMENT!!!

WITHOUT QUANTIFYING YOUR OWN CLAIM OR PROVIDING DATA TO BACK UP YOUR OWN ARGUMENT!!!

We are literally on a website where skeptics regularly post their claims without any data to back them up. Much of this thread is made up of such claims.

I mean, sure, I could actually approach it a little more scientifically: randomly select posts from a half-dozen threads, try to qualify them as to whether they’re “skeptical” or not, and as to whether they make a claim, and as to whether they back up a claim with evidence… but…
(a) would that convince you?
(b) is it even necessary, given that you can just look around the thread yourself?
(c) the point is that people should offer supporting data when challenged. Thus why I mentioned that the message was Mosher challenging Bastardi to back up his points.

Now, if you’re challenging me, and you want me to actually randomly select posts and see if skeptics provide data… sure, I’ll do it, or I’ll retract my claim if time seems too tight. I think that’s the correct, healthy attitude. But I’m not sure what the point would be — my past experience leads me to believe that actual data isn’t very important to many skeptics. Most likely, it’d be met with a Tu Quoque fallacy.

WITHOUT QUANTIFYING YOUR OWN CLAIM OR PROVIDING DATA TO BACK UP YOUR OWN ARGUMENT!!!

Well, that’s only half of my quote. Since I didn’t write half a sentence, methinks we have selective quoting here, so lets get the full quote, shall we?

You are saying that [skeptics] “rarely quantify their claims or provide data to back up their arguments”, but you are accusing them of wrongdoing WITHOUT QUANTIFYING YOUR OWN CLAIM OR PROVIDING DATA TO BACK UP YOUR OWN ARGUMENT!!!

In other words, I said you were doing what you were accusing others of doing. In response, you say:

We are literally on a website where skeptics regularly post their claims without any data to back them up. Much of this thread is made up of such claims.

Dang, Ben … miss the point much? I accuse you of hypocrisy, you say “the data is there”????

And BTW, how do you get uncertainty for a location that has every seen thermometer? Oh, I know, you make it up. Now that’s some certainty!

Y’know, there are whole fields of mathematics devoted to interpolation and statistics. But the “skeptical” response seems to be “well, I haven’t learned about any such math, therefore using it is equivalent to magic”.

Look, you imaginative fellow, I have NEVER heard any reputable skeptic say anything even remotely like that. If you hang out with skeptics who say that, get your ass out of there at once. You’ve mistaken your location, it’s actually a grade school.

Seriously, Benjamin, it seems you think that Hillary’s plan is the very best one. You know, where she calls her opponents a “basket of deplorables” and “racists” and “sexists” and the like, and you follow her lead by deriding your opponents as innumerate fools who don’t provide data …

How did that tactic work for Hillary? Because I can assure you, it’s not working for you. Making blanket character assassination statements about people who happen to believe differently than you is both poor tactics and poor strategy. Hillary found that out … but too late. You are luckier, you still have an opportunity to eschew her error …

Not my food fight. But, BW, yes there is a whole field of stats devoted to interpolation. About which you likely know nothing, and in which I happen to have a Harvard Ph.D equivalent. Steve Mc has it right, Mann, Karl, Schmidt, and you have it grossly, pathetically wrong. Bring some substance. Not your rubber knofe to a gunfight. This was deliberately insulting to you, as you deliberately have insulted my arduous education.

“I mean, sure, I could actually approach it a little more scientifically”

Could you, I wonder, approach the Paris agreement a little more scientifically? Could you approach a…say a carbon tax a little more scientifically? Could you maybe approach a little more scientifically the explanation as to why it is more urgent for some countries to reduce their fossil fuel use than it is other countries?

Could you approach a little more scientifically the whole #Exxonknew concerns? If Exxon knew when people are saying Exxon knew then didn’t Exxon know before the IPCC knew, and if so, what up wid dat? Could you approach a little more scientifically the solid statistical link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer versus Exxon knew and whatever statistical link that’s about?

Look, you imaginative fellow, I have NEVER heard any reputable skeptic say anything even remotely like that.

Good for you! I certainly have.

I hear a lot of skeptics say “scientists just make up numbers”, when the skeptics can’t understand the math that went into it. I literally went back and forth for dozens of comments on the definition of “logarithm” once, which is really… not that complicated. And I watched an author of a WUWT article struggle with calculus, even when it was central to his conclusions about the error bars of a prediction over time.

So yeah, there’s a tremendous amount of anti-intellectualism embedded in the skeptical movement.

Seriously, Benjamin, it seems you think that Hillary’s plan is the very best one.

I’m sorry, am I not being PC enough for you? You don’t like it when I call a spade a spade?

Hmm, I don’t see you tone-policing people on the skeptic side very often.

“So yeah, there’s a tremendous amount of anti-intellectualism embedded in the skeptical movement.”

You are clearly using the more ambiguous common usage of the word “intellectualism” – “anti-intellectualism” proper would be voluntarism – and in the context of your comment this statement is somewhat “anti-intellectual” itself. Even if you attempted to fall back on stoicism to defend your word usage you would still run into problems. Specifically, Socratic paradoxes which call into question Socrates conception of knowing and “knowing” is something you appear to want address.

Perhaps your complaint is the lack of critical thinking you run into when engaging with skeptics, but if so this implies you are a critical thinker and as one, surely you must have experience of engaging with skeptics with very sharp critical thinking skills. It is more than plausible that skeptics (as a generalized group) have some members with no or little critical thinking skills, just as it is equally plausible that advocates of (whatever it is you’re advocating) have some members with no or little critical thinking skills.

It is also plausible that those lacking in critical thinking skills from both groups would disagree with my argument and find the notion wholly implausible, but if I’m right this reaction only makes them more entrenched in untenable thinking strategies.

Look, you imaginative fellow, I have NEVER heard any reputable skeptic say anything even remotely like that.

Good for you! I certainly have.

I hear a lot of skeptics say “scientists just make up numbers”, when the skeptics can’t understand the math that went into it. I literally went back and forth for dozens of comments on the definition of “logarithm” once, which is really… not that complicated. And I watched an author of a WUWT article struggle with calculus, even when it was central to his conclusions about the error bars of a prediction over time.

Surely you don’t expect anyone to believe a word of that without links to each claim, do you?

In any case, those statements have nothing to do with your claim, which was very specific. You didn’t say that people claim that scientists “just make up numbers” … and sometimes, sadly, that one is true. It didn’t say that some people don’t know what a log is, also true. And it didn’t say that someone might struggle with calculus … shocking I know.

No, your claim was much more specific and much more derogatory. You said:

Y’know, there are whole fields of mathematics devoted to interpolation and statistics. But the “skeptical” response seems to be “well, I haven’t learned about any such math, therefore using it is equivalent to magic”

Sorry, amigo, you can’t change the goalposts. You claimed that skeptics are so dumb that they think that math is magic. I think you’re just throwing mud at the wall and hoping it sticks … and trying to defend what you didn’t say and ignoring what you said is just more of that hand-waving.

You have to defend what you said, not what you’d like people to think you said.

And BTW, how do you get uncertainty for a location that has every seen thermometer? Oh, I know, you make it up. Now that’s some certainty!

Y’know, there are whole fields of mathematics devoted to interpolation and statistics. But the “skeptical” response seems to be “well, I haven’t learned about any such math, therefore using it is equivalent to magic”.

it’s chaotic at the scale of small cloud bursts out in flyover land, and no that is not climate, climate is did that area have 10 cloud bursts a year or 20, and you can’t make that up and have it mean anything.

it’s chaotic at the scale of small cloud bursts out in flyover land, and no that is not climate,

Again, this comes back to the field of Statistics which you are rejecting. Sure, maybe temperatures are somewhat random at local scales on timescales, but that’s considerably smoothed out as you move to months and regional averages.

It’s incredibly obvious that there is some structure and bounds to temperatures. If not, then it could be 0 Kelvin here tomorrow, or a million degrees. Or a million million.

But it isn’t. Why do you think that is? It’s almost like there are physical laws constraining how hot or cold it will get. But if there are, then we can predict the temperature within some error bounds.

“It’s incredibly obvious that there is some structure and bounds to temperatures. If not, then it could be 0 Kelvin here tomorrow, or a million degrees. Or a million million.

But it isn’t.”

Foolish Warmism. Stating tomorrow’s possibilities as present fact. Your opinions and assumptions about the future are equivalent to a five year old child saying it’s a fact that the Sun will rise tomorrow. Until tomorrow comes, we won’t know for sure – we devoutly hope our assumption is correct.

As to things being incredibly obvious, it’s incredibly obvious that the Earth is the centre of the universe, the Sun rises and sets, Nature abhors a vacuum, and lightwaves need a luminiferous ether to vibrate, and that surrounding a thermometer with CO2 will cause the thermometer to get hotter.

Strike that last one, that’s too silly. Nobody would believe it.

Keep believing that you have established the bounds of temperatures in the future. I hope you’re right. I’ll let you know tomorrow, if I remember.

Mosher’s “alt-science” is just his own cute little version of the d-word.

Thanks for pointing that out, afonzarelli, I hadn’t realized that. It’s a wonderful phrase, like “fake news”, that you can use anytime and anywhere to denigrate and minimize another man’s point of view … what’s not to like?

In fact, there is no “alt-science”, there’s only “alt-right” and “ctrl-left”, and sadly Mosh seems to favor the latter …

Moving forward, that is, moving onto January 20 and beyond, it is unlikely that heretics will be round up and placed in interment camps as has been the prevailing notion of what should happen amongst academics and political types. Rather, I must expunge from the darkest recesses of my heart, thoughts of retribution and revenge. I know I must be set such fury aside.

What next? Is there an opportunity now for rationale debate? Should we all go on as if all this unpleasantness never happened? My emotional side certainly says: NO! My rationale side, such as it is, would say: It’s conditional. Conditional upon the removal of those whose hands on the levers of power, influence, promulgators of opaque climate science, and I can think of a few, who have championed both here and abroad obsequious and blinding allegiance to catastrophic climate change. Their time is done.

As Mr. Trump’s thoughts seem to be modifiable on climate change, and the folks who will be at the controls for the climate change assessment, bureaucratic management and future research dollars, although it would be best, I believe a thorough house cleaning will not take place. Possibly a more surgical approach will be seen: lopping off a Penn State here, a Columbia there; reprioritizing NASA earth science under some other auspices. Nothing very much really, just whittling away at both the edges and core of the ideology. Something that could be done, say, in 4 years rather than engage in a 100 years war. More likely than not, energy innovation will produce abundant and less expensive electricity, necessary for global betterment of its inhabitants. Data sets will have more points, and tiresome forecasts of events 100 years hence will achieve their rightful spot in the dust bin.

SS, alternatively we can establish bilateral reciprocity, energy security and reliability, and control of only true pollutants. You lost the election. Tough. Your continued propaganda isn’t going to work any more. Get used to reality.

(1) It is not propaganda when a correct macro approach to Renewables is presented using integrated grid engineering economics (taught at every leading engineering school like the University of Chicago, Georgia Tech — and used by every major electric utility).

(2) It is not propaganda when things like the Agriculture “Law of Limiting Factors” is presented, illustrating that Climate Change/Global Warming presents “Wicked Problems” to Ag (and it is incorrect to simply define CO2 as plant food).

(3) It is not propaganda when “Ideas” are presented from leading Economists (eg. Nordhaus, Tol) on things like trade and climate clubs.

It is Nasty Propaganda and Bullying when good faith people like Zeke Hausfather come to CE and are verbally attacked on a personal level — explaining why there is not much objective dialogue here at CE. Rud and Others want CE to be their echo chamber.

Rud’s Comment illustrates the problem here at CE in trying to find “Common Ground”:
(1) It is not propaganda when a correct macro approach to Renewables is presented using integrated grid engineering economics (taught at every leading engineering school like the University of Chicago, Georgia Tech — and used by every major electric utility).

But at what cost? What about the intermittent nature of wind and solar? Storage is expensive. And then what is never mentioned is the reliability of all of this electronics and mechanical parts in about the worst environment you can operate them in. What are we going to do in 10, 15, 20 years when 20 or 30 percent of what a few hundred million panels that are installed when they start to fail? 10 panels, with a 40 year life, will start to have failures in 10 to 12 years. and that was just 10 panels.

(2) It is not propaganda when things like the Agriculture “Law of Limiting Factors” is presented, illustrating that Climate Change/Global Warming presents “Wicked Problems” to Ag (and it is incorrect to simply define CO2 as plant food).
(3) It is not propaganda when “Ideas” are presented from leading Economists (eg. Nordhaus, Tol) on things like trade and climate clubs.

It’s propaganda because it made on usually, a very exaggerated base assumption, based on models that are worthless, which are based on a hypothesis that isn’t even right. It’s like quoting the military, it’s their job to extrapolate the worse case, it’s not meant to be “true”, didn’t I hear they even have a plan for zombies? Hey, there could be a virus that infects your brain and make you violent, right?

Personally I like it when people like Zeke pay us a visit. It is also good to see people such as Jimd and jch swimming against the CE tide. The last thing we want is an echo chamber and that very much includes Rud who has taken the trouble to investigate a number of related agw matters.

Personally I would like to see a monthly guest scientist publishing and defending a piece here. Most denizens are perfectly capable of being civil and perceptive when they are discussing a well laid out paper.

Your remark and the subsequent link to LA Times is based upon a speculation:

“If President Trump follows through with candidate Trump’s promises, it will be all but impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. ”

As an aside, it should be noted that the LA Times official editorial policy is to prohibit skeptical views of climate change to be published as the science is already settled.

You embrace both an editorial policy and speculative outcomes not currently seen, only might come true. You project a Chinese economy upon the future where all economic models so far have proven unreliable. Donald Trump has proven to be a “Black Swan” in the usual scheme of world events.

I recommend against foretelling the future. Rather, I would suggest enumerating and holding to scrutiny what you would do if you were Queen. Then we all would learn something substantive about you.

Stephen Segrest: (2) It is not propaganda when things like the Agriculture “Law of Limiting Factors” is presented,

Is that one of those “limits to growth” that were so popular in the 70s?

It may not be the case that CO2 is “simply” plant food, but it is undeniably plant food, and there is evidence from experiments that its low concentration in the atmosphere is currently a “limit” on plant growth.

If there is but one takeaway from the Presidential election it should be that the MSM (of which the LA Times is a leading member) are not only biased and out of touch with a large segment of the American population, but both clueless and ignorant on a wide range of subjects. There is absolutely zero evidence supporting the position that US trade will suffer under a Trump Presidency. If anything it is a hopeful wish so the authors can say they told us so. Which speaks volumes to the type of citizens they are.

Beats flipping burgers I’d warrant, micro6500, but maybe not. At the very least it keeps them more efficient, which would tend to offset the expensive storage costs and ancillary maintenance expenses on the other gadgetry to handle their intermittence.

Which, by the way, sounds like good jobs to me.

Building and installing solar panels … well, that sounds like good jobs to me as well. But then again, I could say the same about nuclear power plants.

Don’t gas-fired and coal-powered plants also require no small amount of expensive engineering attention to operate at their design efficiency?

***

I’d be tempted to say that hindsight makes everyone brilliant, but I just can’t bring myself to be *that* stupid, not even for me. Case in point, witness how many liberal pundits are *still* desperately attempting to spin away from the very real possiblity that Trump didn’t so much as win the recent election as they lost it for Hillary.

I am wondering if we have read the same article, ie the one linked by you?

My first quote was lifted from the article. Here’s another:

“As 2017 approaches, China is poised to assume global leadership on climate change, and the U.S. is poised to become the new climate-action outcast.”

Is this all about trading in “renewables”? China going Green?

The speculations are: that any rise in CO2 will cause terrible harm to the world; renewables like wind and solar are the options available to forestall such calamity; China has the manufacturing capability to make more windmills and more solar panels which will give them control over the world economy; the trade wars ensuing from China’s renewable energy manufacturing will relegate the USA to second class something or other. Feel free to add more if you so choose.

In my mind’s eye, the entire article is about climate change as that is what is in the title and then repeated throughout.

I remind those who might care, that the LA Times’s specific editorial policy is not to publish anything related to climate change that is contrary to the dogma; ie, man is bad and is doing bad things and the Satan himself, Donald Trump has raised his pitchfork by way of colorful emphasis, climate change is a hoax conceived by the Chinese.

As with all forecasts, particularly political, economic as well as the CO2 caused catastrophe of climate change, not all of us are dependent upon the models of our own construct. We can, and probably should, wait to see what unfolds and then discuss adaptation. I certainly will. How about you?

matthewrmarler — I’m in Ag (and have co-written numerous peer reviewed science papers primarily with the University of Florida and DOE labs — go to ResearchGate to find them).

The overwhelming comments here at CE are that CO2 is simply plant food — end of story. Any posts balking at this conclusion is propaganda.

As my CE propaganda has stated, I believe that increased greenhouse gasses present Wicked Problems to Ag. Things like the different biology in plants (C3 and C4), how elevated CO2 levels (in studies) have reduced nutrition levels in plants like rice, soybeans, and wheat. That smog (a SLCP) reduces crop yields. Impact of heat and moisture on plant diseases and insects.

Matthew — no, the law of limiting factors is not something new — not some conspiracy I and Others are coming up with to fuel CAGW. If you would be of “Good Faith”, you’d at least Google this term to understand it.

Timg56 and RiHoo8 — Clearly you want an “echo chamber” here at CE where the only acceptable response to RiHoo8’s question “What have we got to lose?” would be nothing. Any other response is propaganda.

RiHoo8’s question is hypothetical (as Trump has not even been sworn in) — of course there is no evidence. The L.A. Times editorial as well as many other articles in economic publications state a very serious risk in Trump’s position on GW/CC could be U.S. export trade of high technology products (green, nuclear, efficiency, pollution control of SLCPs).

Many leading economists are saying this. But to even bring this concern up in CE is (to you) propaganda.

In the past here at CE, I’ve stated that I oppose a stand-alone U.S. Carbon Tax. It’s a regressive tax; would penalize U.S. manufacturing; and just increase World greenhouse gas levels as lost U.S. manufacturing would certainly more energy efficient and cleaner that in developing countries.

But I’ve stated “One way that a Carbon Tax might work is through international trade “Carbon Clubs”. Here at CE when I refer to work by leading economists (Nordhaus, Tol) on this — the “CE Echo Chamber” erupts saying I am spreading propaganda.

Interestingly, it appears that China is doing exactly this (but we shouldn’t even talk about this at CE).

PA No, China is going to implement a Carbon Tax. It will be interesting to see how this develops in the Nordhaus, Tol, etc. concept of international trade and “Climate Trade Clubs”, especially between China and developing countries. China never does anything without giving itself a competitive advantage (and circumventing current WTO Rules?). Whoops! I’m spreading propaganda.

For all the so-called CE “Experts” in engineering — you should at least go visit a regional electricity dispatch center. As to sophistication, it’s something that NASA would “tip their hat” to.

At leading engineering schools, they teach simulation in how an integrated grid would perform under different scenarios (e.g., load profiles, fuel costs, generation resources, etc.) for planning purposes. An example of this highly complex simulation/modeling is the GE MAPS models (which you can Google).

As anyone who has experience in Integrated System Planning knows — generation resource decisions are not made simply on stand-alone operating characteristics (a micro approach) of an intermittent resource (wind, solar).

Decisions are made of how resource options FIT into the integrated grid (a macro approach) — with the objective to select options which result in lowest overall system cost on the integrated grid.

Which leads to my so-called propagranda where I’ve consistency said that all planning decisions must follow sound engineering economics:

(A) On a highly inflexible integrated grid, if the level of Renewable penetration is only 1% — so be it!!!

(B) However, on a highly flexible grid (e.g., lots of shiny new natural gas combined cycle units) with ready access to bulk hydro — one should not be surprised that a Renewable penetration of 30% results in the lowest System economic costs.

My belief in “engineering economics” is why I adamantly oppose a Federal or any locked in State Renewable Portfolio Standard — that would place decision-making in the hands of Politicians rather than our engineers.

Which leads to my so-called propagranda where I’ve consistency said that all planning decisions must follow sound engineering economics:
…..
(B) However, on a highly flexible grid (e.g., lots of shiny new natural gas combined cycle units) with ready access to bulk hydro — one should not be surprised that a Renewable penetration of 30% results in the lowest System economic costs.

The capital, and lost opportunity costs will reject this option without a mandate, other than as a marketing ploy. And this doesn’t even address my reliability concerns. The snowflakes are completely clueless.
One of the leads at Harris Semi was pulling a load of memory chips out of a life test rig, did some calculations on his RPN HP calculator, said they had a MTBF of a little over 2,000 years with a big smile, I asked why, they needed to be that high? He said, because when you put a bunch together into a satellite, all together the MTBF could be only a few years, even with 2,000 year life parts. Space is a harsh environment for electronics, but so is sitting in the baking Sun, wind and rain 365 days a year.

And how many solar panels are they going to try and deploy? With 40 year warranties (do you really think they’ll last 2,000 years too)?
They are mandating a power grid that Baghdad residents will laugh at.

Question to Micro6500 — and others like him: And where specifically did you study or professionally apply integrated grid engineering economics? A Utility? An internationally acclaimed consulting company like GE?, Have you been professionally been published on your expert views?

Guaranteed Answer (if he would be truthful) — He has no educational or professional experience.

Stephen Segrest: The overwhelming comments here at CE are that CO2 is simply plant food — end of story. Any posts balking at this conclusion is propaganda.

Like my post? CO2 is not “simply” plant food, but it is undeniably plant food, and the experiments show that increasing CO2 produces increased growth?

As for your “law”, is it true? Or is it like the “law” (due to Ricardo) of “comparative advantage”, which is widely asserted with little to no evidence behind it, and strong counter-arguments? Honestly, in science, some “laws” are better than others.

“Guaranteed Answer (if he would be truthful) — He has no educational or professional experience.”

There are countless educated professionals who argue that Jesus was the fountainhead of Catholicism and Christianity, but it appears as if Jesus himself was never ordained a priest and he wasn’t any Pope. In truthiness and as a matter of factiness, if there ever really was such a man named Jesus, credentialed or not, he, much like you, belonged to that cherished priest class umbrella.

If you want to consider comments of the LA Times as evidence, that’s your choice. Just don’t expect anyone to take you seriously. Opinion, even “expert” opinion is not evidence. And the editorial board of the Times is no more qualified to offer opinion on US trade than I am.

As for your reference to economists, well that’s simply more of your credibility being flushed. You’ve just picked climate science’s older, uglier sister to take to the dance. Nice.

So there is no desire for an echo chamber. I don’t care if anyone is interested in my opinions. However there are several here whose opinions I do find interesting. Yours could be one if you didn’t spend so much time whining about how no one treats you like a leading light here. Instead of complaining, go out and earn it. One piece of advice, don’t blow credibility with posts like the one I originally replied to. Editors and Economists, unbelievable.

Science does well in describing small things like molecules, rigid bodies, rubber bands.
Whenever it tries to piece them together into a theory it ends up having to deal with massive numbers of undetermined degrees of freedoms.

This is an unsolved problem.

Therefore science is basically a religion and a pretty dismal one, at that.

Ulric, since one man’s “flame” is another man’s “passionate outpouring”, what is disappointing is your willingness to accuse un-named folks of wrongdoing.

If you’re going to bust people for something, how about you have the common decency to either link to the comment or quote what you find objectionable, so each of us doesn’t have to wonder whether you are complaining about our own actions.

That way, you might accomplish something, rather than just complaining about the state of the blog.

Typical Eschenbach, you justify your own bad behaviour, and then pick a bogus argument as a smokescreen. Don’t preach to me about common decency when you are the one that flamed. There is no wondering to do as no one else flamed, and I don’t remember ever seeing such language on this blog.

“That way, you might accomplish something, rather than just complaining about the state of the blog.”

That is simply desperate obfuscation Eschenbach, this blog is wonderful without your flaming.

Typical Eschenbach, you justify your own bad behaviour, and then pick a bogus argument as a smokescreen.

Typical Lyons, accusing me without a quotation or any link to whatever I said has your knickers in a twist. You just like to wave your hands and make vague unsubstantiated, unreferenced accusations, and you don’t like that being pointed out.

Don’t preach to me about common decency when you are the one that flamed.

Oooh, you’re so cute when you’re angry … you accused me, but you didn’t have the balls to name my name until I called you on it. Cowardly.

As to whether I’m the one that “flamed”, I couldn’t say, because you haven’t said what it is that you think is “flaming”. For all we know so far, you’re just seeing ignis fatuous and mistaking it for flames.

And you STILL haven’t had the decency to say exactly what it is I am supposed to have done wrong. Underhanded.

Some of the comments seemed to be more concerned about maintaining the location of the function rather than the function. If the Federal Government did a credible job of operation at peak efficiency and effectiveness and went through a legitimate thorough budget process, this kind of discussion wouldn’t unnerve so many people.

I worked for a Federal agency for a short period and with several Federal agencies for decades besides being in the military. Inefficiency infected every operation at the Federal level. Even a young Army specialist could identify where costs could be cut- every day in every way.

At the state level we went through rigorous budget evaluation every year looking for ways to eliminate lower priority activities in favor of more critical functions. When the budget is required to be balanced that kind of oversight is a natural outgrowth of the process. Where is the discipline at the Federal level.

Look at today’s news about a study finding waste of $125 Billion in the Pentagon budget being buried. A disgrace.

Every agency can accomplish more if forced to. The focus should be maintaining the critical mission functions regardless of where they are located and eliminating redundancy
so that they optimize efficiency and effectiveness.

Cerescokid,
“Look at today’s news about a study finding waste of $125 Billion in the Pentagon budget being buried. A disgrace.”

Agree that it’s a disgrace just like $10,000 toilet lids and wrenches. This is where a ‘business’ type can impact things in an appropriate way. But tarring NASA with and DOD issue is not the way to go.

“Every agency can accomplish more if forced to.” Yep. Have seen the ‘doing more with more’, ‘doing more with less’, and ‘doing less with less’ approaches.

Doing what needs doing via the ‘right’ agency would be a pleasant surprise. I’m not happy with our choice of leadership but will live with it. Here, my expectations are quite high w/r/t efficiencies of operations. He applied, got the job, and now it’s time for action. Just concerned that much like the sequestration events we’ll see a hatchet job and not needed surgical precision. But I’m hopeful.

In terms of the Antarctic Sea Ice, Lavergne et al 2014, identified a polynya in the Weddell Sea in 1974, in about the same place that one exists now. Deep convective overturning was opening a conduit to the abyssal ocean. They viewed it as a rare natural event. Today’s NSIDC images show about the same thing as existed in 1974, maybe a little larger.http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n4/full/nclimate2132.html

If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory: Climate science believers state that all the evidence, and 98% of scientists, are on the same side.

If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you are a rare person in a rare event. They almost always refuse to discuss or debate with anyone who disagrees. I have been to multiple climate conferences. The consensus alarmist people are almost always invited and they never accept to speak and almost never to just listen.

As a workers, compensation lawyer (17 years in the past) I routinely deposed board certified doctors, such as neurosurgeons and cardiologists. It was not unusual for highly credentialed physicians working for prestigious organizations to be wrong. For instance two egregious mistakes were made by the Cleveland Clinic. In the first a worker was unequivocally diagnosed with Scleroderma by his local Internist. However, the Cleveland Clinic “specialist ” found that the worker had a psychological problem. (Later disproved by the obvious lesions that developed) In another case, the Cleveland Clinic found that a workers facial paralysis was caused by a migraine headache, not the large amount of solvents he was exposed to in a poorly ventilated painting area.

So, my experience has been that notwithstanding what appear to be high credentials, one has to make one’s own judgments about the accuracy of any expert’s conclusions. The need to evaluate purportedly expert opinion is even stronger when the expert is biased as is quite often the case with respect to climate science.

Foolish Warmists apparently “do science”. This seems to involve creating jargon, playing with computers, and making bizarre claims that surrounding a thermometer with CO2 will increase its temperature, and similar silliness.

Some researchers use “the scientific method” to increase mankind’s knowledge and understanding of Nature. These people are often referred to as “scientists”.

The word “science” is generally defined as a noun. Your implied admonition to “do science” makes as much sense as asking someone to “do shoe”, or “do banana”. Why not just use plain English?

Oh well. If I see a foolish Warmist actually applying the scientific method in respect of the supposed science of the properties of the average of particular weather records (known as “climate”), I’ll start revising my opinions on the existence of magic.

In the meantime I’ll leave you do science. Good luck. Let me know it looks when it’s done.

I was referring to fake scientists, who refer to themselves as climatologists.

I’m not sure why I should “do lunch” with a group of nuclear physicists. Is that somehow better than working with them?

Lumping fake scientists in with real scientists is Is just another attempt to deny, divert, and confuse. Climate is just the average of weather. Not much science there, is there?

The predictions of nuclear physicists can be evaluated against reality – some experimental equipment involved is really, really big. Really, really expensive, too!

From time to time, the experimental result consistently doesn’t support the theory. Oh well, wrong, have a think, change the theory. That’s physics – nuclear or otherwise.

Climatology takes the view that experiments are either not necessary or impossible, and if model projections are wrong, just adjust the model. Do this on a daily basis, and claim this demonstrates the brilliance of your thinking.

From NASA –

“Model development is an ongoing task. As new physics is introduced, old bugs found and new applications developed, the code is almost continually undergoing minor, and sometimes major, reworking. Thus any fixed description of the model is liable to be out of date the day it is printed.”

Deny, divert, confuse. Don’t complain, the model will work sometime. We can’t provide a fixed description, because that would show we don’t actually know what we’re doing, which is why we have to furiously revise the model, continually.

A lifetime task! Who needs to look for a real job? Yay!

By the way, “my” physicists ate lunch, had lunch, met for lunch, and so on. I can’t remember them ever “doing” lunch. Maybe that’s what climatolgists do. They don’t seem to much else of lasting value, that’s for sure!

Who or what is pizzagate? Is it yet another piece of climatological jargon?

Oh all right, I actually looked it up – that’s 10 seconds of my time spent – well or otherwise, who knows

‘Pizzagate is a debunked conspiracy theory.”

Your comment has not enlightened me. Are you claiming that NASA is some sort of conspiracy? Are climatologists supposed to be part of a conspiracy, or are they claiming that others are conspiring against them?

Delusional psychotics sometimes claim that they are conspiracy victims – they might claim that their failure to be awarded a Nobel Prize was due to their enemies conspiring against them.

Having never to been to pizzagate (as far as I am aware), your suggestion that I return there seems to indicate you may indulging in a bit of unwarranted conspiracy theory.

I suppose if you were, you’d probably have an unshakable conviction that the GHE was real, and Gavin Schmidt was a first class scientist. After all, NASA wouldn’t put an undistinguished mathematician in charge of a large budget, would it?

I wish you well with your scientific endeavours. Have you managed to prepare a falsifiable GHE hypothesis involving CO2 yet? Or do dark forces keep scrambling your brain waves? Maybe it’s a conspiracy to suppress your scientific brilliance!

Only a totally unskeptical socialist would have taken that without checking further.

“Pizzagate” hasn’t been debunked yet. In fact, almost nobody but a bunch of #gamergate veterans has even looked into it. The MSM is just perpetrating a cover-up good for making sensible people more suspicious.

That was another Mike Flynn (son of yet another Mike Flynn), who got removed from the transition staff after he retweeted the pizzagate fake news. His father, like his boss, also retweets fake stuff but remains in the cabinet as of now, so the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. These people live in Twitterworld, and there is no rescuing them now.

I’m not sure what your objection to me using the first search result I saw when I searched for “pizzagate”. I just had another look, in case you thought I was part of some bizarre conspiracy.

Still there. en.wikipedia.org. If you believe it’s incorrect, you could always let them know.

I don’t know, and my care factor is zero, anyway. I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, I was usually the last one to know about the latest office romance. Maybe that was a giant conspiracy designed to keep me in the dark for reasons of national security! Personally, I’m not convinced.

There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy for people to act irrationally. “Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”, Lysenkoism, CO2 GHE belief – on and on.

If pizzagate affects the fact that the CO2 GHE is nonsense, it would be relevant to me, and I might give a toss. Nope, all my tosses are safe and sound.

Flynn, a few more iterations and you might catch on. You need to pay attention to what you write more closely. In the meantime, do proceed as usual.

BTW, I agree, you have no theories. You have some opinions and ideas. So my bad, I will not refer to them as theories in the future. None of your ideas could ever develop to that level of understanding.

“We” are getting “our” butts kicked, and given how the Electoral College is almost certainly going to allocate Hillary’s majority of the popular vote to Mr. Trump, it’s likely to turn into a full on ass-whipping.

If you do science the way you do constitutional law then the butt kicking’s are only going to get worse.

Electors (those of the electoral college) are chosen by each state. Alaska, for example, has 3 electors, Arizona has 11 electors, Arkansas has 6 and California has 55. You seem to think that Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas should relinquish those votes to California simply because California has more people in that state than the other three combined.

Further, you seem to think that the name The United States of America is just a populist corporate branding name like some hotel with full amenities (including HBO and an honor bar) that calls itself the Rustic Inn.

We are not the Confederacy of New York and California with Those Other States Who Do What California and New York Tell Them What To Do. Probably not because then we would be the CNCTOSWDWCNTTWTD.

> If you do science the way you do constitutional law then the butt kicking’s are only going to get worse.

I don’t do either, so I guess my goose is well and truly cooked, Jean Paul. If your Constitutional law is as good as your punctuation of plural nouns, I may have some spare sauce for your gander.

> You seem to think that Alaska, Arizona and Arkansas should relinquish those votes to California simply because California has more people in that state than the other three combined.

What I *actually* think is that the Electoral College was put in place to keep a direct popular vote from installing just the sort of incompetent populist demagogue I fear that Trump might turn out to be. I also think that function was long ago neutralized when most States mandated by law that their electors award all their votes to whichever candidate took the majority of the popular vote in their State.

Thus, *effectively* the EC has functioned as a surrogate popular vote under that regime. Five times now that surrogate majority has sided with the minority of the national popular vote.

Which I think is ridiculous. Nevertheless, that’s the way it works.

I am somewhat amused, however, at how so many self-proclaimed Constitutional scholars thumping the States’ Rights hardline *apparently* overlook the fact that the Founders were *very* concerned about the potential hazards of a fully-direct democracy, especially for the executive officer. Neighborhood of Federalist 65, popularly attributed to one Alexander Hamilton, is about right methinks.

> Further, you seem to think that the name The United States of America is just a populist corporate branding name like some hotel with full amenities (including HBO and an honor bar) that calls itself the Rustic Inn.

I haven’t expressed any such thinking here or elsewhere, which is probably my cue to simply ignore it, plus the balance of your post.

> Maybe you noticed, I didn’t let it stop my work, I just thought your comment was about as insincere as it could possibly be based on past behavior.

You mean my past behavior wherein I told you that I thought your method had some merit, pointed to some problems I thought were rather glaring, encouraged you to seek expert advice and get it published? That behavior?

“If your Constitutional law is as good as your punctuation of plural nouns, I may have some spare sauce for your gander.”

Maybe, but I’m not a Grammar [Nazi], I’m just alt-write.

“What I *actually* think is that the Electoral College was put in place to keep a direct popular vote from installing just the sort of incompetent populist demagogue I fear that Trump might turn out to be.”

In part; here is Hamilton’s #68 and the part that addresses that:

“It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”

Of course, your assumption is that the electors would universally decide that Trump’s demagoguery during a campaign represents Trump the President-elect, but *discernment* – it could be interpreted that I have used the asterisk to couch that word to communicate I would like to bold, italicize, or underline the word but am not in a position to do so or it could be interpreted that I’m just a big fat grammatical ignoramus, but I would hope you interpret this as me winking back at you, you big flirt…because I’m alt-write – is a quality Hamilton assumed electors would have. Hamilton continues explaining other reasons for electors:

“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. They have not made the appointment of the President to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the people of America, to be exerted in the choice of persons for the temporary and sole purpose of making the appointment.”

So Brandon, when you say:

“I also think that function was long ago neutralized when most States mandated by law that their electors award all their votes to whichever candidate took the majority of the popular vote in their State.”

You seem more than a little confused. On the one hand, you appear to have an issue with the fact that Clinton, who won the popular vote on a national level will likely not be elected by the electoral college and you have this issue despite the fact that you are aware that Trump won the necessary electoral college votes to secure the office. On the other hand, you have an issue with the electoral college because it has *through time* been neutralized by states compelling electors to vote for the popularly elected candidate in that state. Consider this tidbit from Hamilton:

“Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves.”

But you make it clear that in your mind *the people* are not those people in separate sovereign states, but instead:

“Thus, *effectively* the EC has functioned as a surrogate popular vote under that regime. Five times now that surrogate majority has sided with the minority of the national popular vote.” ***Which I think is ridiculous.”

This argument is then undermined by your subsequent argument:

“I am somewhat amused, however, at how so many self-proclaimed Constitutional scholars thumping the States’ Rights hardline *apparently* overlook the fact that the Founders were *very* concerned about the potential hazards of a fully-direct democracy, especially for the executive officer.”

A fully direct democracy would be one that elects Hillary for having the most votes instead of allowing an electoral college to elect (presumably) Donald. The electoral college goes towards addressing that thing you have correctly argued the Founders were *so very* concerned about. I too am somewhat amused but at your amusement at the *many self-proclaimed Constitutional scholars* while you then your offer your own, somewhat flawed interpretation.

Ignorantia juris non excusat remains a bedrock principle in American jurisprudence and the people are expected to know the law, including and beginning with the Constitution.

To bad you ignored the rest of my post as it drove home the point that the most populace states in a nation made up of separate states sovereign unto themselves do not represent *the people*. In order for the *the people* to be represented in a confederacy of states, even under federalism, the people in each state have to be considered, not just those in the most populist states.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.

I normally pass on grammar lames, Jean Paul, but in this case I thought you’d appreciate me returning you a favor.

> Of course, your assumption is that the electors would universally decide that Trump’s demagoguery during a campaign represents Trump the President-elect […]

lol. What are electors supposed to do other than decide how a prospective President might perform other than, at least in part, note his or her behavior on the campaign trail?

Why do election campaigns at all if they’re so allegedly useless for this purpose?

And no, I don’t assume that the EC as *originally* envisaged by Hamilton would “universally decide” that Trump’s *evident* demagoguery or *utter* lack of governing experience precludes him from the nation’s highest public office. Think of it as more of my hope that it would.

I have only the faintest of hopes that it presently *will*.

That should just about dispense with your presumptions about my assumptions.

> But you make it clear that in your mind *the people* are not those people in separate sovereign states […]

As originally conceived, the electors *could* be chosen by a state’s voting population, but the Constitution allowed states to appoint them however they wished to do so.

Regardless of how electors were selected, in no case did the Constitution demand that electors then vote for any particular candidate — they were intended to use their *own* judgement to select from candidates they deemed suitable.

> A fully direct democracy would be one that elects Hillary for having the most votes instead of allowing an electoral college to elect (presumably) Donald.

Yes, which is precisely what Hamilton wished to avoid for reasons which he laid out in Federalist 68.

> The electoral college goes towards addressing that thing you have correctly argued the Founders were *so very* concerned about.

Not now it doesn’t. Electors in most states are bound by law to answer the popular vote in their state in “winner take all” fashion, except those few states who use the district method. A trained monkey could do that job.

“I normally pass on grammar lames, Jean Paul, but in this case I thought you’d appreciate me returning you a favor.”

It is more than greatly appreciated.

Brandon, I accept several of your points as valid. I’m still a little confused on your problems with the EC, but am satisfied you know why you have these concerns. You certainly look a lot less confused than I thought you did. Thanks for your clarifications.

As to electors bound by state law requiring them to vote how they’ve pledged to vote versus voting their conscience. I am ambivalent on this matter. I have heard and read people refer to Ray v. Blair as authority to support the argument that electors must vote as they’ve pledged to do, but my reading of that case isn’t interpreting it that way. To the best of my understanding the SCOTUS did not even address the issue of an elector actually voting for the pledged candidate and the narrow scope of the ruling concerned whether the state could compel an elector to take that pledge to begin with.

I’m also fond of Justice Jackson’s dissent of which you more and more seem to echo. I’ll tell you what, I’m all for the Democrats picking this fight and attempting to get electors to vote their conscience and see how the courts react to that.

> I accept several of your points as valid. I’m still a little confused on your problems with the EC, but am satisfied you know why you have these concerns.

I can perhaps sum that up, Jean Paul. The main problem I have is that it doesn’t function as originally intended, i.e., to insulate the presidency from a direct democratic process. It rather does the opposite, but in a way which I feel has disenfranchised my vote for Hillary. Hence arguments along the lines of “the EC ensures that all voices in all the states are heard” ring … rather hollow … to me.

Were the situation reversed, I imagine I’d be saying something like: I appreciate your position but [shrug] that’s just how it works … let’s give her a chance. Or something.

> I’ll tell you what, I’m all for the Democrats picking this fight and attempting to get electors to vote their conscience and see how the courts react to that.

I dunno. If the EC doesn’t perform as expected, I think there could be blood. Interesting times.

Your vote was not “disenfranchised”. It was minimized due to the outcome and the INTENT being fulfilled! Your logic is convoluted and also wrong.

The only way your vote would NOT be minimized is if we used a popular vote. You do not like the EC because you lost, but you lost because the intent of the founders was NOT to allow the big states to monopolize the vote. Hence the EC. It worked as designed.

No it was not the *original* INTENT at all, philjourdan. I’ve already described above why:

As originally conceived, the electors *could* be chosen by a state’s voting population, but the Constitution allowed states to appoint them however they wished to do so.

Regardless of how electors were selected, in no case did the Constitution demand that electors then vote for any particular candidate — they were intended to use their *own* judgement to select from candidates they deemed suitable.

The INTENT was for election of the president (and vice-president) to be insulated from the pressure of direct democratic polling. The founders had a healthy aversion to the tyranny of majorities which can happen in direct democracies … which is why they overall architected a constitutional *republic*. They read their history, hmmm? They knew what happened in Athens for instance.

> Your logic is convoluted and also wrong.

Irony. You’ve muddled up the original intent of the EC vs. what it became: a *winner-take-all* rubber-stamp “voting” body within state boundaries. My logic isn’t convoluted; the way the system actually works vs. how it was originally intended to work is convoluted, if not silly.

> The only way your vote would NOT be minimized is if we used a popular vote.

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. My argument is to ask the question about which we want: a directly elected president, or an indirectly elected one instead of this stupidly redundant hybrid which five times now has managed to do neither.

Sorry Brandon you are the one trying to use convoluted logic. Clearly the intent was for the States (not the people) to choose the president. Clearly the way the states chose their electors was up to the states. And most have decided the winner take all. The intent is fulfilled. Your vote was not disenfranchised. You voted for a losing candidate. Clearly the system worked. The intent was to insulate the small States from being overwhelmed by the big states. And indeed that is what happened. Those whining about Hillary winning the popular vote (a useless measure since the rules going into the game did not take that into account) do not realize that without one state, she loses the popular vote as well! And that state had no republican on the statewide ticket other than Trump. In other words, no reason for Republicans to vote. And they apparently did not.

49 States were saved the tyranny of the one state by the wisdom of the founders. The EC worked as designed. That is EXACTLY what it was designed for.

> Clearly the intent was for the States (not the people) to choose the president.

Again, from Federalist 68 confirming that the intent was to insulate the choice of the president by a direct democratic process:

Another and no less important desideratum was, that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves. He might otherwise be tempted to sacrifice his duty to his complaisance for those whose favor was necessary to the duration of his official consequence. This advantage will also be secured, by making his re-election to depend on a special body of representatives, deputed by the society for the single purpose of making the important choice.

> Clearly the way the states chose their electors was up to the states. And most have decided the winner take all.

Binding an Elector’s vote to a particular candidate based on a popular poll — whether by district or winner takes all — defeats this stated purpose of intent:

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

Electors which rubber-stamp the will of the popular poll inside their state borders are redundant. No special knowledge or insight is required to be able to recognize that one candidate received a plurality of the popular vote, and tick off the correct box reflecting that statistic.

> You voted for a losing candidate. Clearly the system worked.

And there we have it, philjourdan. Thanks for that nice and tidy circularity.

Electors that defy the will of The State (remember this is the UNITED STATES) are going against the intent. The intent was for the States to choose the president. And when the country was formed, there were 13 INDEPENDENT States. Thus the intent was to allow each State to set the rules for how they would select the electors based upon the policies and needs of that State. Thus the intent of the founders is fulfilled. I have no doubts that others today wanted the founders to think of the original Intent as one monolithic solution, but that is not what they wanted.

Thus once again, you completely miss the point of both the intent and effect of the EC, and how it has worked for over 200 years. Perhaps one day you will be able to understand that there was 13 Independent States at the founding. And, by the intent of the Founders, supposed to be 50 Independent States today.

> Electors that defy the will of The State (remember this is the UNITED STATES) are going against the intent. […] Perhaps one day you will be able to understand that there was 13 Independent States at the founding.

lol, Phil. Which is it?

Your first sentence is factually incorrect about defiance. It’s only state, not federal, laws which attempt to bind Electors to particular candidate as determined by the popular vote within their own state — and not all states have laws to that effect.

Even though the Constitution does not specifically prohibit states from binding Electors to a particular candidate by way of a popular vote, that clearly was not Hamilton’s original intent when he laid out the arguments for the EC in Federalist 68.

> I have no doubts that others today wanted the founders to think of the original Intent as one monolithic solution, but that is not what they wanted.

Curious “rebuttal” since I’ve not been arguing that the founders intended a “monolithic solution”.

> Thus once again, you completely miss the point of both the intent and effect of the EC, and how it has worked for over 200 years.

Yeah, whatever.

I understand the historical context of the 1787 Constitutional Convention regarding proportional state representation in both the Federal Legislature and Electoral College from two perspectives: large vs. small states and Northern (free) vs. Southern (slave) states. Thus the Connecticut Compromise reached between small/large delegates creating a bicameral federal legislature (and the equal-representation Senate in particular) and subsequently the Three-Fifths Compromise reached between free/slave state delegates which mitigated — but did not entirely remove — slave state representation in the population-weighted proportional representation in the House.

Thus, it’s not lost on me that the way number of state Electors are awarded — exactly equal to number of House Reps. and Senators — is rooted in the very same arguments regarding the debate between weak vs. strong central government and proportional vs. equal representation of states’ interests in the federal legislature.

So no, I’m not the one “completely miss[ing] the point” here. I simply don’t subscribe to your stark this-not-that mutually exclusive view of historical context and Constitutional law regarding the EC …

… a view which thoroughly glosses over the original thinking behind indirect election of president and vice-president by way of an intermediate, select and purpose-specific body of Electors who were clearly intended to be an investigative, deliberative and judicious body in contrast to the collection of party-loyal, rubber-stamping monkey-puppets they’ve instead become.

Denier, alt science, cargo cult, heretics, spoon benders, witch doctors… all the same thing. Feynman was onto all of them. Some wear bones in their hair; some do statistics; all are entertainers… it’s a show, they all pet their gimmicks. If they can sell tickets, people will fill the venues.

None of the datasets exhibit net warming over the Antarctic since 1979.

gsod has 80k records from 1940 to 2015, many years with no records, and about half with only 1, this is for stations south of 62.5S lat Other datasets may have more.
That said All years have an annual average min temp change of -0.00213F, and Max is -0.00031F. Average Max temp of -4.3F and Min of -15.2F

But I’ve also started to use fluxes to do my averaging, so the fluxes scale properly, where temps do not. It’s been a long term objection. So I’m in the process of switching my math over to fluxes then converting them back to temps.

What do the denizens think of that?
When I do that, I get an average min temp of -11.6F and max of -0.98F
About 4F different than doing it with temps!

I’m wondering if our resident Climate Heretic agrees that the apparent change in the polar vortex is due to man-generated CO2? From the article:
…
A new international study on climate change predicts that Europe and North America will be experiencing bouts of very cold weather, while insisting that the freezing temperatures will be the result of global warming.
In its “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” moment, the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change asks readers to suspend disbelief and continue to have faith in global warming even as they pile more wood on the fire this winter.

While acknowledging that the “chaotic nature of atmospheric circulation precludes easy answers,” the authors suggest that continuing changes in the Arctic are influencing wind patterns and the occurrence of extreme weather events in northern mid-latitudes.

A related study, published in the same journal earlier this week, claimed that the Arctic “polar vortex” has been shifting from North America toward Europe over the course of several decades. This means that winters in Europe and North America have been getting colder and should continue to do so.

“I’m wondering if our resident Climate Heretic agrees that the apparent change in the polar vortex is due to man-generated CO2? From the article:”

Well I cant speak for JimD(?)
But as a (retired) UKMO meteorologist I can give you my answer…

It’s a case a cause, effect, cause, effect ……

But:
We do know that low Solar weakens the stratospheric PV.
It is ad it is – this has a dwonwelling effect on the troposperic PV.

We do know that open E Siberian Seas in late Autumn (esp Oct) lead to more WV being injected into the atmosphere and causing higher Eurasian snow-fall than usual ( a sig correlation between Oct snow advance and -AO winters).
Put that together with Tropical forcing (La Nina like E Pac and a weak QBO).
And you have the current.

Now I would suggest that at least the more open E Siberian Seas part is AGW related.

Fake news is a meme within the soap opera which is news, in the business which is news and which has a specific audience.

it’s not an overarching category but part of a work of fiction.

Fiction isn’t fake, it’s fiction. It has a certain structuree to qualify, in this case being part of a narrative that keeps the soap opera audience tuned in and interested.

The product of the news business isn’t news but you. They sell your eyeballs to advertisers.

A small audience but big enough to pay the daily bills. Soap opera tastes have edited every national debate for years. Trump may be breaking through, not killing off soap opera but taking away its reputation as serious stuff, and perhaps its news editing position.

“You don’t say of fiction that it’s fake, but that it’s fiction. It has its rules that define the genre.”

Literary critics do…come to think of it so do all kinds of other critics too.

And then there is Picturesque:

“Fake, fiction, make believe
Bring out the worst in you
Bring out the best in me
And so
I’ve gotta learn to let you go

………..

First up with the worst luck
Impulsive calls
Chew me up and spit me out
Each time I fall
Why can’t you just be real with me

It’s all, it’s all
It’s all, it’s all just

Fake, fiction, make believe
Bring out the worst in you
Bring out the best in me
And so
I’ve gotta learn to let you go
It’s fake, fiction, make believe
You wouldn’t share the truth
I was too blind to see
And so
I’ve gotta learn to let you
Learn to let you go”

“On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news”, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017”, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”

Yep, they ignored all the fake news and down-right lies out of people like AlGore, SlobMoore, CNN, Obummer, Piglosi, Harry Screed and other lefty people and organizations. It’s only when the right gets communications out to the people at large that there’s this sudden concern for “fake” news.

“Those fact-checkers are a nuisance to Trump when 70% of his statements are made up.”

Sigh. Ya gotta wonder about the sanity of Trump fact-checkers who spend 70% of their time fact-checking made up stuff…unless, you made up that statistic. I just don’t want to, for the sake of my own sanity, fact-check your likely made up statistic.

68.32% of statistics are made up on the spot. Fact-check that, brother.

Fairly obscure because they also check inconsequential statements. Did any of this make the news like Trump tweeting Boeing were charging $4 billion for Air Force one, and to cancel it, which caused their stock to go down. Most people have heard Trump’s lies, and some even act on them.

Obscure? LOL! You do not even know the language! It is a documentation of 13 error by a supposed fact checking site! What is “obscure” about that? And that is just one of them! There are many others! But does JimD know? Does he even try to refute it?

No, because he relies on Fake News sites. So anything not fake news is “obscure”. Regardless of the facts, which do not support him!

It is not ‘in the weeds’! It is out in the open! Straightforward? There are no “facts” in Politifact! I have given you several instances (there are many more) of their incompetence to their stated mission! They have no integrity, and you have no idea how to do any research!

Try again. Why not go to the Defense Appropriations document, that shows Politifact has fabricated another story!

The Politifact article you linked doesn’t support your 70% claim. Or maybe the problem is I lack the calculator that can translate pants on fire numbers into percentages. I don’t mind admitting I have no idea to do that without a proper tool.

Ask yourself why there are no right-wing fact-checkers supporting Trump’s indefensible statements. The fact-checkers are journalists who can actually check facts. Like the MSM these people are not ideological.

Check the facts via the fact-checkers. Point to pants-on-fire Trump statements that were wrongly characterized that way. Hillary also got a few of these, so they are not politically selective, just Trump has such a high rate, which is not surprising considering that his main information source appears to be Twitter and various conspiracy theorists in his close circle.

The figure I’ve seen thrown around several places is $3.2 Billion, but when you add contingency factors, it’s well within a $4 Billion margin. (IIRC I followed a link from somebody’s tweet to a story with the whole $4 Billion, but I couldn’t track it down just now. And it may have been a less reliable site.)

And note that this is from a left-wing site. Vox has been accused of being “fake news”, but nobody’s ever suggested its fakes would support Trump or anybody on the right.

Are the fake “fact-checking” sites going to go back and adjust their analyses? Will the MSM report on the fact that everybody who jumped in about how Trump was wrong were the ones that were really wrong?

Gimme a break.

Of course, there are valid reasons why it’s so expensive. Based on R&D and Wright’s Law. Maybe if the MSM would do their research and pop back with explanations like that first thing, rather than headlines about how Trump was wrong, he would have a more cooperative attitude.

BTW, somebody needs to explain Wright’s Law to the President Elect. Obviously it’s not currently considered necessary for presidents to know that,stuff, unless Obama tweeted something about it and I couldn’t find it.

If Obama had known about it, I would be very surprised if he didn’t take the opportunity to tweet something telling the PEotUS to google it.

Please. Why would you need evidence to prove that career NSA and CIA staff are lying? After all, it’s obvious that they ….um…are in the tank for Clinton. And not a single one has provided (or leaked) proof of this linkage between Clinton and this anti-Russia propaganda because….um….they fear for their lives because the senior level official would put out hits on them if the exposed the conspiracy.

See? No evidence is necessary. All you need to do is make an assertion, and describe hypothetical conditions that make it impossible for your assertion to be falsifiable.

Same explanation for why AK didn’t need any actual evidence before reaching a certain conclusion that Comey is in the tank.,..for…well, obviously not Clinton…but clearly he’s in the tank for….somebody.

Same explanation for why AK didn’t need any actual evidence before reaching a certain conclusion that Comey is in the tank.,..for…well, obviously not Clinton…but clearly he’s in the tank for….somebody.

More hallucinations from your cognitive dissonance.

I never actually reached any conclusion about Comey. My favored hypothesis, based (IIRC) on something from Scott Adams, is that he was trying to be an honorable man caught between conflicting responsibilities.

But I did say that if he was in the tank for Clinton, he probably had to be wary of being arrested by his own rank&file.

Of course you and your hand puppet don’t understand deductive logic, or any other sort of reasoning. All you know how to do is extract a few words from something says and twist them into some sort of attack.

Typical SJW trick.

Here’s another theory. For the record, I’m skeptical. I should also note that I don’t think he’s speaking literally. Not entirely. (But I could be wrong.)

100% true. CIA is run by globalists, it's corrupt and they are doing false flags. FBI (at line agent level) is pro-America. https://t.co/1UW2ppUtTd

People who say they voted for Hillary Clinton were less likely than Trump voters to view the claims made in these fake headlines as accurate, according to the survey. This may be partly due to the fact that the majority of top-performing fake news stories about the election on Facebook had a decidedly pro-Trump or anti-Clinton bent. However, it’s notable that a majority of Clinton voters still believed the fake news stories to be very or somewhat accurate.

[…]

Brendan Nyhan, a political science professor at Dartmouth college who conducts research into political misinformation, reviewed the data and said he is surprised by the high percentage of Democrats who rated the pro-Trump stories as very or somewhat accurate.

“It’s especially striking that both Democrats and Republicans think the stories are accurate in many cases,” said Nyhan. “Even partisan-motivated reasoning — which we might expect to make people question fake news that is harmful to their candidate — does not appear to protect people from believing in it.”

I think they call that a circle jerk. Getting the fake news to verify the fake news sites. Yep!

Might want to explain why so many of “Hillary” supporters believed CNN when they doctored the quote from Trump. Or how about when Dan Rather forged the memo from the Texas ANG? Or when Politifact called the fact that jeeps are built in China the biggest lie of the year?

Pizzagate is a real story. The story is that a bunch of over-eager young researchers on the Web think they’ve dug up a massive blackmail conspiracy. They have piles of evidence.

Are they right? I doubt it. But they believe it (or at least take the possibility seriously). They have evidence that needs some explanation. That’s news. Real news.

Laughing and dismissing it as “fake news” isn’t going to make them stop. Only explanations for their evidence will do that. Hopefully much more mundane and harmless explanations. But they need explanations that make sense, and hopefully have some sort of proof.

Behind each of these fake stories is an individual or group who dreamed it up, and you can probably trace who they are, which is when they would normally be debunked, but not in the current post-truth climate where journalistic research counts equal to random tweets.

Didn’t someone here post a link to that evidence about the FBI agent investigating Clinton’s emails being involved in a murder-suicide? Did someone here link to articles that provided evidence of Clinton’s brain diseases? Not fake stories I’m talking about evidence that needs explanation

I don’t believe either one. The “intelligence agencies” are full of sh1t. I don’t believe the Russians leaked anything. They probably did have the data, from both agencies, but it was somebody else who leaked it.

The “DNC hacking” was actually at least two groups, making independent penetrations, generally associated with the Russian FSB and GRU. These two groups generally don’t cooperate, and appear not to have in this case.

The leak has rather blatant signs of having been modified by some Russian-language group before being leaked. Best guess is that this was a false-flag effort to frame them, although the GRU, at least, has in the past been fast&sloppy enough to have made such errors.

Most likely, there were more hackers, enough better than the “official” Russian groups that they didn’t leave back trails.

The leaks themselves may have come from one of the hacking groups, or may have been an inside leak. NOBODY KNOWS. The statements of of the “intelligence agencies” are clearly politically motivated and thus of no value.

All of the information my opinion is based on comes from public information from private security agencies.

The agencies examined the raw data and compared signatures with past associated efforts of which I am sure they have many examples they won’t tell anyone about. Even Putin has not denied it, and is more likely proud of it.

The agencies examined the raw data and compared signatures with past associated efforts of which I am sure they have many examples they won’t tell anyone about.

Actually, AFAIK what they examined was what the private agencies extracted. And the private agencies had already matched the signatures and publicly identified them.

None of which says anything about who leaked what. We “know” two different Russian agencies had the data, that means nothing. They were legitimate intelligence targets.

There’s no evidence that the Russians leaked it, except for a few bits of metadata that are better explained as a false-flag frame attempt.

Anyway there’s no good reason to think that the US “intelligence agencies” had any good evidence of Russian involvement in the leaks. They have (IIRC) never given any sign beyond fantasy stories that they have anything like the capabilities of the private agencies.

If Trump thinks even all the US intelligence agencies are conspiring against him, what does he do? Purge them? This is a major problem in his mind. He will base his policies on his own fantasies rather than anything their analysts say.

#1 – While it is generally understood that Hillary’s server WAS hacked (given the lack of security), to date there is no hard evidence of a hack. LIe #1 (and the Intel agencies have not claimed otherwise since the server was bit bleached).
#2 – What WAS hacked was Podesta’s emails. And that could have been done by a script kiddie as it was a simple social engineering hack. You do not need the intelligence agencies to tell you that since the hacking email was part of the last ones released.
#3 – Many servers in Russia are staging places for data, NOT the origin of data (and intelligence agencies will tell you that as well). The only one who knows where the emails came from is Assange, and while you have no obligation to believe him, he has stated the source was not Russia.

Yes, there is a Politifact that lays all this out, as I pointed out. They count the $4 billion claim as Half True. Today he is knocking a fighter-jet program and Lockheed Martin stocks have dropped. It is becoming a pattern.

Wrong again! Politifact is all Iie! The only truth you find there is by accident. But keep citing them. You lost that battle a month ago when the country rejected the fake news of the MSM. And over the next 4 or more years, they will reject more of it because Trump has shown he does not need their “filter” to talk to us!

If you Iie to me, why should I ever believe you again? Politifact has repeatedly Iied and has to EARN the trust back. They will not by publishing half truths.

Explanations are always so simple when you’re convinced of a conspiracy.

FBI, intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, Comey…. they’re all in on it. Tens? of thousands of people, and not one has provided actual evidence of AK’s conspiracies. But he has reviewed the evidence.

Ask yourself why you want to defend the Russians as completely innocent in all this.

I’m just following the evidence where it leads.

The fact that you think I “want to defend the Russians” just demonstrates how worthless anything you say is. Pure projection. All it proves is that any time you say something, you’re just rationalizing wishful thinking.

Would you think the same if they were accused by intelligence agencies of helping the Dems?

You mean who is in bed with the Russians? Would that be the candidate who enriched herself by millions of “speaking” fees for her husband from the Russians? The one who facilitated the transfer of control of 20% of the US Uranium resources to the Russians?

The intelligence agencies would NEVER do that. What they do (and have done) is to say there is some “evidence”, of which you will never see it. And of course there is “evidence”, because the data resided on a Russian based server! But any computer hacker will tell you that is SOP for those who steal data! And more often than not, the Russians have no hand in it!

But you keep telling your l1es. As I have said, you cannot pay for someone to be this clueless.

Yes Danny, you should stop spreading them. The so called report from the fake news is not what even you are talking about. The WaPo simply states there is NO evidence of Russian Government involvement, and that the ONLY evidence is third hand of some “Russians” doing the hacking, but no direct evidence.

Jim why do you continue to comment on stuff with such certainly when it appears you have no expertise at all. What do you know about code and hacking it? What us your experience with intelligence agencies or law enforcement and how they investigate crime? It sounds like you read something, most likely from sources you like, and believe it without question. Or maybe you are so sure of your own beliefs that you don’t need evidence to support them. All I can say it is mind boggling to me how you can say the things you do.

You can decide not to believe him when he mistrusts the intelligence assessment. No wonder he doesn’t attend their briefings. He lives by his own “facts”, and doesn’t need them. This all fits together.

It fits that you are trying to convince us, impotently, that you know what Trump is thinking! But you have offered no evidence, not even a scintilla, that you know anything about Trump! Your only statements about Trump have been proven to be false. And you doubled down on them because you have no facts!

Just more wild conspiracy theories. Lewadowsky should study you, but then he has no clue how to study any group!

Jim D | December 8, 2016 at 12:05 am |
I only blame the Russians because the intelligence agencies and several independent groups do. They should know.

The Russian claim is like playing spin the bottle with the Lacrosse team in the Duke case and claiming the lucky winner is guilty.

You have no proof, just some politically motivated speculation at the intelligence agencies. Yet another “consensus” argument where there is no smoking gun. We already know the DOJ ran interference for Hillary. The agencies are so politicized at this point that their word without proof is meaningless.

Oh, but you DO know, AK. Let’s rewind to one of your previous statements in this subthread:

Spoken by somebody who still believes all the fake news posted by such MSM fake news sites as the NYTimes, WaPo, etc.

Moving on:

> The statements of of the “intelligence agencies” are clearly politically motivated and thus of no value.

Yes. Clearly. No dispute. No value whatsoever. Because you have Decided it to be the case.

> All of the information my opinion is based on comes from public information from private security agencies.

Mmmhmm. It’s just an “opinion” now. Based on “public information from private security agencies” … to which you have not linked (that I have seen), and by virtue of being private cannot be easily audited for whatever *other* information they *might* have chosen to NOT release.

I don’t know the answer either, but I do find it odd that you’re implicitly defending the Russians on this one while at the same time bawwing about the “Len1nist” tactics of the MSM …

… which last I looked is a free-market, for-profit enterprise in this country. Kind of like those private security agencies you talk about, but don’t specify.

Oh, but you DO know, AK. Let’s rewind to one of your previous statements in this subthread:

Spoken by somebody who still believes all the fake news posted by such MSM fake news sites as the NYTimes, WaPo, etc.

The private security agencies aren’t “news” sites. They’re there for people with problems, including potential customers. (While there’s enough difference between them that I’m skeptical of some of what they say, mostly it hangs together.)

Yes. Clearly. No dispute. No value whatsoever. Because you have Decided it to be the case.

As you mention right below, it’s my opinion. Which is what I was asked for.

Based on “public information from private security agencies” … to which you have not linked (that I have seen), and by virtue of being private cannot be easily audited for whatever *other* information they *might* have chosen to NOT release.

I don’t know the answer either, but I do find it odd that you’re implicitly defending the Russians on this one while at the same time bawwing about the “Len1nist” tactics of the MSM …

… which last I looked is a free-market, for-profit enterprise in this country.

I was referring to the MSM as the victim of “Len1nist subversion of authority”. A standard trick: penetrate (or establish and penetrate) an institution of authority then subvert it to your own purposes.

Kind of like those private security agencies you talk about, but don’t specify.

That’s right. I was expressing an opinion. Not wasting my time trying to convince deniers. (It’s not that hard to track them down.)

That only works if you’re able to overcome your own preconceptions and biases. Otherwise you won’t be able to distinguish “internal consistency” from your own confirmation bias and wishful thinking.

We’re believing Putin now, AK? Is he significantly less Len!nist than the MSM?

Post-Soviet Russia is dominated by former KGB agents. They used such tactics widely against the West, it’s doubtful they would allow anybody else to use them against Russian institutions.

And my statement was in response to a claim that he “won’t make a public denial because he knows he has already been caught.”

I’ll mention for the record that I read an article in RT a while back claiming the Putin’s interference was based on a “certain” expectation that Horrible Hillary would win and efforts were intended to de-legitimize her future administration.

I couldn’t find it again with a quick search (and deniers here don’t deserve more) but IIRC it was bylined, and contained no links or other sources for its claims WRT Putin’s motivations. Or the FSB’s. Or whoever it was talking about.

Frankly, I don’t really believe any official Russian organ was responsible for the DNC leaks, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Putin’s denial of responsibility.

“There’s a bunch of people here who want to treat it like it’s still the Soviet Union and get in the Cold War,” Rohrabacher said. “That’s not what Donald Trump wants, it’s not good for America, and it’s better to cooperate with them to actually take on real enemies.”

Invoking Saint Reagan’s outreach to Gorbachev was also pricelessly ironic:

Since 1989, the U.S. policy debate over China’s most-favored-nation (MFN) status (renamed “normal trade relations,” or NTR, under U.S. law in 1998) has undergone several transformations. The issue was essentially irrelevant in the 1980s, when annual extension of MFN to China was nearly automatic. In 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, no resolution was even introduced that would have disapproved or put further conditions on China’s MFN status eligibility. But by 1990, Congress and the Bush Administration were clashing repeatedly over the direction of post-Tiananmen China policy. Administration officials often blamed Congress for being “obstructionist” and “partisan,” while Members of Congress often criticized the President for ignoring congressional initiatives and being too accommodating toward Beijing. Much of this debate was carried out through the annual process of renewing China’s MFN status.

*Who* was POTUS “in the 1980s”?

lulz!

This couldn’t *possibly* have anything to do with the Paul Manafort angle, could it? Nah. Everybody knows the NY Times is just another liberal MSM fake news site, and all the Russia-bashing is just a cover for the Real Len1inst Agenda of turning us into Communists.

I remain highly skeptical of anything “from the CIA”, whether “leaks” or otherwise. Judging by how they fumbled around in 2001/2002 (“WMD”) and the behavior of the current PotUS, there’s a strong disconnect between the appointed top officials (with sycophants) and the rank and file.

I haven’t seen anything claimed to be from the CIA that hasn’t been already exposed by the private organizations. I suspect the “report” of which 2nd/3rd hand accounts were just published in the WaPo are the creation of a few “top-level” Obama appointees, and when/if we all get a good look at it will include caveats similar to what I mentioned back in July.

I also note that you were involved in that conversation. This is the sort of reason I don’t have much use for your “contribution” here. It’s all about dishonest rhetoric.

Sorry, no. An “error” is not capitalizing a proper name, or printing “to” when you mean “too”. Inserting a word into a direct quote that changes the meaning to what you want it to mean, and not what the speaker meant is not an error. It IS FAKE NEWS. That you are so blinded by bigotry you cannot realize that truism shows how far gone you are.

A recent error that the MSM corrected was a Yahoo report that Clinton had more votes than any president in history, when in fact Obama had more in 2008, and it is close for 2012. When they say something wrong, they don’t double down on it like Trump, they admit it.

The Democrats’ narrative is that:
1.The Russians hacked DNC emails. Narrative – this somehow explains Hillary’s loss (it being terrible to disclose what DNC honchos are saying).
2. Russians who hacked DNC emails would never, ever have hacked the easily accessed private server of the sec state. Narrative- if they had, Hillary was reckless rising to criminal, therefore they must not have hacked it.
In short- the JimD/Joshua want us to believe Russian government hackers are omni-present, genius infiltrators of American political communications. Sometimes.

WRT this whole “Russia” thing, all we have is vague recycled “he said” “she said” stuff and this:

Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security

Release Date:
October 7, 2016

For Immediate Release
DHS Press Office
Contact: 202-282-8010

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government. The USIC and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assess that it would be extremely difficult for someone, including a nation-state actor, to alter actual ballot counts or election results by cyber attack or intrusion. This assessment is based on the decentralized nature of our election system in this country and the number of protections state and local election officials have in place. States ensure that voting machines are not connected to the Internet, and there are numerous checks and balances as well as extensive oversight at multiple levels built into our election process.

Nevertheless, DHS continues to urge state and local election officials to be vigilant and seek cybersecurity assistance from DHS. A number of states have already done so. DHS is providing several services to state and local election officials to assist in their cybersecurity. These services include cyber “hygiene” scans of Internet-facing systems, risk and vulnerability assessments, information sharing about cyber incidents, and best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential cyber threats. DHS has convened an Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group with experts across all levels of government to raise awareness of cybersecurity risks potentially affecting election infrastructure and the elections process. Secretary Johnson and DHS officials are working directly with the National Association of Secretaries of State to offer assistance, share information, and provide additional resources to state and local officials.

Read it carefully (something people claiming “scientific” expertise should be capable of).

They are “confident” (but see below) “that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

But they are not confident about the leaks:

The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.

Tricky stuff, but it’s for public consumption: designed to say one thing while implying another.

Sad that our intelligence agencies are being used as press agencies, especially to favor one candidate in the election. But that goes back to 2001/2002, when they pushed Iraq. (Perhaps that’s why Mr. Trump doesn’t care for their “briefings”?)

It’s certainly possible that Putin directed the FSB and GRU at different times (one in 2015 and one in 2016) to mount a secret influence operation that would favor Donald Trump’s run for President, and that those normally competent spy agencies executed this secret operation by using not one but two blown threat actor groups (Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear), Russian servers and tool sets, free Russian-hosted email accounts on Yandex, and distributed the files via Wikileaks (a long suspected Russian front). Oh, and also create a FancyBear[.]net website and a character named Guccifer 2.0 who negotiates with reporters and speaks at security conferences. Because, you know, SECRET.

Or, it’s possible that the Russian government hasn’t directed this attack, and that the White House, in the midst of the ugliest election season in our lifetime, fueled with Russophobic hysteria generated in part by headline-grabbing cyber intelligence firms, has mis-attributed it to a State actor and is now about to launch a cyber attack against a nuclear power w/ cyber capabilities close to our own.

[…]

We already have enough real problems with Russia in Syria and Ukraine. Someone, maybe Russian, has embarrassed the Democrats but there’s no hard proof as to who’s responsible. And the bottom line is that the DNC bears at least some of that responsibility no matter who attacked them.

I ‘checked’ your linked article. Not even a ‘theory’ of a “blatant effort by the Clinton establishment to prop up the ridiculous efforts “To Push For An Electoral College Coup” much less actual evidence.

Not even a good try. But an interesting projection of a ‘conspiracy’ (theory excluded purposefully).

Liberals Will Cite Russian Hacking To Push For An Electoral College Coup

[…]

Thus far evidence for wild “Russian hacking” theories is still confined to hearsay and cheap speculation. Nevertheless, desperate Democrats will cite this as reason why the Electoral College should take the unprecedented step of subverting the democratic will of their states’ voters, and blocking the duly-elected president from taking power.

The “blatant” was mine, but you asked for evidence and it’s there. Check out the growing list of tweets at the bottom.

In its first show of public support for efforts questioning the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory, Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it is supporting a request by members of the Electoral College for an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election.

[…]

Podesta’s statement follows an open letter from 10 members of the Electoral College, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Christine and a former member of Congress, who are demanding a briefing from U.S. intelligence officials on any ongoing investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the electors — nine Democrats and one Republican — argue that they require the information ahead of Dec. 19, when the Electoral College is set to meet and select the next president. [my bold]

Notice that Trump at one point asked for Russian help in hacking US emails, and his former assistants in the campaign had those ties, so he brought this suspicion on himself. Russian oligarchs may also be some of his big investors, but with his tax forms still hidden we don’t know where his interest payments go. You might defend it by claiming he didn’t know what he was saying or doing during the campaign, but that doesn’t fly. Anyway this is all over the media today, and they want a report by the inauguration, because it sure isn’t going to be investigated afterwards if Trump can help it.

Trump’s statement showed a belief in Russia’s abilities (at least at that time). I don’t think it needs a civil war or EC revolt. They just need to do this investigation, and he is already on the wrong foot with intelligence, who are not people he would want to antagonize. He brings up WMD to spite them, and won’t say anything about all the terrorists that they have helped weed out.

Trump’s statement showed a belief in Russia’s abilities (at least at that time).

Well, I suspect everybody with 3 or more brain cells figured the Russians could and probably already had penetrated Clinton’s home server.

Which changes the equation: he didn’t ask them to hack anything, he jokingly asked them to release some of what they had.

The way the MSM arrogated themselves the right to lie about what he said, even while printing his exact words, is shameful. The number of people who snarfed up the excrement spewed by the MSM without even comparing it to his actual words is even more so.

The subject was the DNC hack, wikileaks and the election, and the connections to Russia. Were Russia capable of the DNC hack? You say no? Intelligence comes up with the answer that they did, and you will have none of it.

Were Russia capable of the DNC hack? You say no? Intelligence comes up with the answer that they did, and you will have none of it.

Liar, denier, or fool. I said nothing of the sort.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, you’re suffering hallucinations due to cognitive dissonance. Try going back and reading what I wrote. I just put up a link to the stuff from July a little while ago. You can find it with browser search.

This seems to finally be a sign that you can give the intelligence the benefit of your doubt, that Russia was responsible. You think it more likely or not? If Trump’s 400 lb guy on a bed can do it, why not Russia? Is Trump being consistent?

YOu seem to have a problem differentiating between capability and deed. You keep mixing the 2. Trump never denied Russia had the capability. He denied the DEED. And right now, no one knows who did the deed – not even the CIA. The liberal talking about saws and fingerprints are merely trying to get their 15 minutes of fame and are totally clueless!

As are you. Until you learn the difference between capability and deed, you will remain confused.

Actually he did not say they were not capable. Only you did. What AK said was that almost anyone was capable – and they are. However the issue is not capability. The issue is action. Did they? YOu think so because while you think they are not capable, you believe they did (must be liberal logic).

Assange says they did not. He knows more than you do. However he could be lying. We do not know. And that is the story. WE DO NOT KNOW. However, we do know that you think they lied about WMDs 13 years ago. But you also think they are not lying now. . And we know that the FBI said there was nothing new (no new evidence), but the CIA – the agency of deception, not honesty – says they think they did (but again no evidence).

So who do we believe? An Obama flunky? Or the FBI which apparently hates to be wrong even to the point of not recommending prosecution for laws broken (but they did say laws were broken by Hillary).

And how do you know their hacking capabilities? Are you a Russian agent?

If this was aimed at JimD, the answer is he doesn’t know or care. For him they’re whatever happens to be convenient to his argument of the moment.

If it was aimed at me, I’ve worked in IT for decades, my current responsibilities include data/network security, and I’ve studied the publications of many of the major private players in the business. (As well as the totally unreliable MSM junk.)

I drew some pictures below which put the actions and capabilities in better context: The Russians (and just about everybody else and their kid sister) had the capability to break in and steal the data, and almost certainly did (it’s a legitimate intelligence target).

He brings up WMD to spite them, and won’t say anything about all the terrorists that they have helped weed out.

You’re entitled to your “opinion”.

Mine is that the same disconnect exists between the Obama appointees and the rank&file that existed in 2001. He just needs to clean out the types Obama put in, and put in somebody who’ll work better with the real agency.

You are so blinded by your own shortcomings, you cannot even see it when you project onto others!

You are very bad at underestimating your opponent. And now even the Russians. A script kiddie could hack the hillary email server! And one did hack Podesta’s email account! That does not take super technology or a genius! Script kiddies are doing it all the time, because their targets are even more clueless than they are!

If you have doubts about Russia’s ability to hack open servers, you really are clueless. The USSR did not lose the Superpower race because of stupidity. They lost it due to economic reasons!

More fake news from JimD! Trump did not ask for any help. He did make a joke and said that perhaps the Russians should release the Clinton emails since the scuttlebutt at the time was that her server HAD BEEN hacked. But he never (even jokingly) asked help in Hacking.

LOL! And you wonder why you are so clueless! You rely on fake news instead of getting the facts!

I think those who think Hillary used her server just so the Russians could hack it, are the ones making that assumption. We would have seen much more interesting wikileaks if they had done that.

Jim, you are still completely missing the point, they did not have to hack the server to get those emails! All they had to do is collect clear data off the internet itself, the same thing the NSA does already.

Worse still, is she had email communications between her and and the President, over those same unsecure transmissions!

Notice how the NSA has not publicly announced they have a copy of those emails? When anyone who has paid attention to their cyber snooping programs, knows they have a copy! This included Hillary, which then makes one ponder why she did what she did, when she knew we were collecting email traffic.

The case they have to make is that she did it deliberately so that it could be hacked. This is why the FBI didn’t have a case. For example, Petraeus had a deliberate act of knowingly giving someone classified information in person. Same with Scooter Libby. That is what a real prosecutable case looks like.

No they don’t. There is a no intent statute they can use, and she had intent to run her own email, and had to know how insecure that was, how many times has she been read into the nsa collection program, and been involved in discussing ISIS’s use of encryption for recruiting. To think otherwise is to think she is an idiot.

It is a shame the word “Iie” causes censoring, because it is the best word to describe your bunk! He said no such thing! He never said he would “lock her up”. He never said he would prosecute her! And then, after the election, he did not say he was going to ignore her crimes! He said HE would not pursue them. So he changed nothing. He merely made it clear what he said in the first place! And in the final analysis, in a real government (not the banana republic dictatorship we have had for the past 8 years), it is not up to HIM to decide who gets prosecuted and who does not!

You have shown you have no integrity, no ethics and no facts. I only wonder how much lower you can sink.

That would be the case you have to make for it to be a deliberate crime, so basically that’s where the argument about a crime fails.

18 US Code 793 subsection (f)

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

She did when she sent it over email. Ever watch the movie the Falcon and the snowman about that spy? When he got read in, they locked him in an emi shielded room full of file cabinets with metal bar locks, or a tumbler lock.

No, her server was not a authorized location before it was hacked. It had no legal purpose to be on an unsecured system for any reason. If you leave something out on you desk, and an uncleared person see it by accident, that is a violation of subsection f. Anyone around classified data knows this, it is made clear when you get your clearance.

There’s a secure safe designated for that doc, or you have to sign that you will keep it in a designated safe. If it’s in there, and you can show it was locked, you’re fine. Your locked office isn’t secure, janitors and others can have keys.

YOU do not get to draw the line. The government does. And the rules are clear. If the “security” guard has the security clearance and is employed by the state department and is part of the security of the information, and if the office is designated as a secure spot, etc., etc., etc.

Hillary does not get to make the rules. And she broke them. Which is against the law. Period.

You could read his statement for yourself. “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.”

But why should I go to the trouble of tracking it down when you misquoted it, as you almost always do.

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.”

Yes, this time correct, but still out of context. The complete statement is here.

For instance, the sentence immediately following the one you quoted out of context with no link is:

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here. [my bold]

This is interesting wording. He specifically mentions the evidence at hand: “on these facts.”

The key issue is that we know people were given immunity, but no grand jury was empaneled. The decision to empanel a grand jury is entirely the DOJ’s, not the FBI’s.

Which leaves open the possibility that he asked for a grand jury and was refused. That’s my inference, based on this statement and his testimony to Congress. YMMV.

Which, of course, could also explain Mr. Trump’s silence. When Attorney General Sessions reviews the case, as he almost certainly will when he takes office, he’s quite likely, IMO, to empanel a grand jury for both Horrible Hillary and former Attorney General Lynch.

They have ways of dealing with classified information that doesn’t involve the internet. IF anything highly classified showed up, it was a mistake, given the normal methods they used for that. Hard to show it was deliberate.

No it does not. It means she did not handle it according to the law. Period. The information does not have to go to any 3rd party. Kristian Saucier’s pics did not. Bryan Nishimura’s information did not. Yet both were convicted.

Seriously – you need to start learning. Right now you are the poster boy for what is wrong with Climate Science.

Nearly 40 percent of the president-elect’s supporters believe the stock market has gone down under President Obama, despite the fact that it’s nearly doubled during Obama’s tenure.

–snip–

And

–snip–

Trump supporters are also living in an alternate reality with respect to the unemployment rate. Even though the jobless number has gone from 7.8 percent in January 2009 to 4.6 percent last month, a whopping 67 percent of Trump voters think it’s actually increased.

Jim D | December 8, 2016 at 9:01 am |
I am fairly sure the details of kind of thing would still be classified, and it is the lack of public information that drives these conspiracy theories.

Well, no.

1. An NSA contractor is being tried for stealing 50 GB of data over some period on the order of a decade.
2. Another NSA employee put the NSA hacking tools on an insecure server and they were taken. We know this happened because when the Russian accusations started to be floated someone posted the tools on a public server.

It isn’t clear when the tools escaped.

The DNC “hack” is reported to be caused by some idiot clicking a “phishing” email – an approach that wasn’t all that sophisticated. Haven’t heard how Hillary’s server got accessed but given the number of intrusions it was most likely just bad security.

If you have a link to some evidence that it took cleverness to break into either one please cough it up.

By the end of the day Friday, thanks to the anonymous leaks, we already knew the likely conclusion of a review that hadn’t even happened: Russia had hacked targets associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the Washington Post reported, relying on anonymous sources familiar with some CIA briefings to the Senate, “to help Donald Trump win the presidency.” Russia’s goal of helping Trump was “quite clear,” said those anonymous leaks.

But how clear? The story itself was muddled on this point, and the unresolved questions reminded me of another time anonymous sources touted intelligence that was supposedly quite clear—when claims about aluminum tubes helped get us into the Iraq war. [my bold]

[…]

Even with the hints of disagreement, the story about the CIA’s new assessments not only pushed a certain conclusion for the president’s review; it also raised the urgency surrounding it, with people, including some presidential electors, even demanding that it be completed before electors finalize the election on Dec. 19.

On Saturday, a flood of follow-up leaks made it clear what some of the doubts were about the “consensus” view. There were different opinions about Russia’s motive: Russia intervened to undermine confidence in our elections, which is what the public explanation has been since the summer. There was no one reason Russia intervened. Russia intervened to affirmatively support Trump.

[…]

There were even curious details suggesting that the CIA’s new conclusion wasn’t based off any new intelligence. Rather it reflected new analysis done on previously collected intelligence, analysis conducted after Clinton had lost the election and President-elect Trump had publicly dismissed the CIA’s intelligence. [my bold]

Oddly, no intelligence community–sourced leaks thus far have backed the most obvious explanation, one that has been publicly offered by former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and by former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden. Both have suggested that Russia hacked Clinton in retaliation for what Vladimir Putin considers similar attacks on Russia and its interests. Those attacks might include the 2011 election protests in Russia, which Putin has claimed were incited by Clinton’s criticisms; the 2011 U.S.-backed regime change in Libya; covert action starting in 2012 to help CIA-backed “moderate rebels” oust Bashar al-Assad in Syria; and the 2014 ouster of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

Space travel to moons and planets is stewwwpudd as it gets, but it’s also impossible unless you know as much as possible about the atmosphere and surface of the destination planet, which means you have to practice up by learning everything there is to know about the home planet.

One of the Mars mission plans… send the astronauts to Mars and just leave them there. They would never come home. it’s just silly. It’s also likely murder.

You have to get there first: “He was the first to calculate that around this altitude, the atmosphere becomes too thin to support aeronautical flight, because a vehicle at this altitude would have to travel faster than orbital velocity to derive sufficient aerodynamic lift to support itself”

How do rockets act in earth’s atmosphere? How do they act in space? How will they likely act dependent upon the object of exploration’s atmosphere? (You brought up Moon and Mars, but are you limiting?) How are the answers derived and on what are they based?

If Dr. C appreciates Nasa’s contribution I’m not in much of a position to argue. If you care to, have at it. I’m not interested.

Mike,
Why in the world would I wish to do that? Thought we were ‘Makin’ Merica Great Agin! My tax money supports a program right here in the good ole US of A. Merican jobs. Merican science. Merican (some) products. Ya’ll are on yer own. Aussie dollars can be sent elsewhere if you choose. Here, we’re concerned about ‘punishment’ for sending US dollars across national borders. 35% reduction in the value of those dollars doesn’t seem a wise investment.

You ask why in the world would you want to use a Russian rocket to get to or from the ISS. Simple answer, the US no longer provides such a service.

The Government wasted the money on climatology, which achieved nothing.

I still have some oldish US measuring equipment. I now buy Chinese – cheaper for the same quality. Even Apple manufactures in China.

Paying more than you have to, doesn’t seem terribly cost effective in the long run. I don’t believe a country can borrow its way out of debt. Job creation is pointless – just printing money under another guise.

Imposing economic sanctions may just make the target become self sufficient and resentful at the one time. Possibly not what you wanted.

Yes, but……..since we’re gonna ‘Make America Great Again’ we’ll just save up our ex-climate dollars, maybe take in a few other countries currencies, and start it all up again.

Hope Elton John won’t charge too much for use of ‘Rocket Man’ as a theme song.

I agree that borrowing to get outta debt is just a bit contrary to purpose. Our ‘elect’ has used words to indicate he may see things otherwise. And potentially he’s use that soon to be future debt to perform ‘creation’ of jobs as you suggest.

Looking forward to a big show. Hope you have some popping corn if there’s any left from ethanol.

I suppose if you owe twenty trillion dollars, a few trillion more won’t be noticed.

All I want is a quiet life. So far so good.

Obviously, I can’t foresee the unforeseen, so I don’t worry about wars, earthquakes, meteorite strikes etc., too much. The experts, such as the CIA, can’t even see the reasonably foreseeable, by the look of things.

I seem to have done a better job, so far. Make assumptions, act on them, and hope. Maybe I’m luckier than the CIA experts. Who knows?

Mike,
“I suppose if you owe twenty trillion dollars, a few trillion more won’t be noticed.”

I think you’re accurate that a few trillion more won’t be noticed out of political expediency. Under Clinton debt was not a concern. Bush almost $6t is barely discussed. However, Obama’s $8t is seemingly the most giganticist thing ever. Even bigger than C in the AGW, if one looks around and speaks with just the right folks. Percentages are an even more entertaining conversation.

“The experts, such as the CIA, can’t even see the reasonably foreseeable, by the look of things.” Seems correct. The CIA apparently can’t even see the Russians according to some.

“The experts, such as the CIA, can’t even see the reasonably foreseeable, by the look of things.”

The CIA entirely failed to even get a sniff of the sudden literally overnight collapse of the USSR and I bet when the same thing happens to the EU, that’ll catch them totally unawares too.

If ever there was an organisation that was totally unfit for purpose and needed a total overhaul from the top to the bottom and a thorough slimming down, the CIA is it.

Amusing that Jimbo and Danny Boy – the very types to express utter loathing and derision for the CIA – claim to implicitly believe every word they say when it is directed at their mega-hate object Donald Trump.

Did you watch the RNC conference? I think “lock her up” was their motto for the conference. In the debate there was a point where he actually said “Because you’d be in jail.” to Hillary. Maybe you have a different way to interpret that.

People listen to me as well. It doesn’t follow that I’m influential with tens or hundreds of millions of people. It doesn’t even follow that I influence those who listen to me as they may listen and then discount or reject any attempted influence.

So how many people “listen” to Adams, how many of those does he influence, and how are they influenced?

I listen to Scott Adams, for instance. I’m only influence to believe he’s weird, not credible, and is worth “listening” to only for the entertainment value.

“CLAIM: “Global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year – the biggest and steepest fall on record.”

TRUTH: This number comes from one satellite-based estimate of temperatures above land areas in the lower atmosphere. Data from the other two groups that regularly publish satellite-based temperature estimates show smaller drops, more typical of the decline one would expect after a strong El Niño event.”

So the complaint is that the number comes from one satellite based estimate? The “TRUTH” is that the temperature is, indeed, declining? That’s also known as cooling, not heating.

Until people can agree on definitions, claim and counterclaim are completely non productive. Very similar to religious claims that “My god/gods is/are more powerful/helpful/oracular/tolerant/wrathful . . . than yours.

The facts don’t care. Nor does Nature. If you choose to build on coastal land which is subsiding – in Miami, say – complaining about climate change is unlikely to save you from the adverse consequences of your actions, if any should occur.

There is no GHE. Reducing the heat that a thermometer is exposed to, results in the thermometer cooling. It’s as simple as that. Try putting something between a thermometer and the Sun, for example. Cloud, a parasol, CO2, H2O, – all will result in cooling. Tyndall illustrated a useful experimental setup, and even did the experiments. Some of his results have been verified by NASA, with small variations in the numbers.

Luckily, the Western world comprises a reasonably small minority of the world’s population. You’ll just have to move to a culture more accepting of differences of thought.

Mind you, if things change there, you might find yourself a social criminal again. I’m happy with a quiet life. I’m probably a social criminal – not believing in the CO2 GHE for starters, but the climate police are incompetent bumblers, and I keep evading them, apparently.

While I’ve previously pointed out a few of Scott Adams’ article’s absurdities and could peck out a handful of others, let me just finish with his last sentence: “And if the risk of climate change isn’t real, I will say I knew it all along because climate science matches all of the criteria for a mass hallucination by experts.”
Let me rewrite that as I would have written it if I was trying to be insightful: If the risks of climate change turn out to relatively insignificant I will say I assumed that after a lot of reading because I learned some climate scientists have tended to express over-certainty, even alarmism, about their research’s results and the inherent implications, often because of reasons not solely focussed on truth searching.
Often when we were being taught to write, we were told to save your best for last. Sadly, Mr. Adams, with his astonishingly deficient insight into this issue may have done just that.
That said, when Dilbert reminded us that “if all else fails your co-workers are edible,” perhaps that was an encapsulation of Adams’ belief that “any danger we humans see coming far in the future we always find a way to fix.” With that optimistic assertion in mind I’m adding a few hundred copies of my sure-to-be Bestseller, “Cannibal Cuisine,” to my huge Doomsday stash of bullets, ciggies, whiskey, silver and porn.

JV, you do know that Dilbert is sarcastic humor about the office workplace? It follows that Scott Adams might use it on his blog. Pity you missed the delightful sarcasm than runs through a post pointing out a serious bias issue in AGW ‘information’.

Does anyone really believe that Trump didn’t know about the appointment before Al Gore’s meeting? Of course he did and it was a set up to ridicule big Al two days later. Trump is a master strategist and Gore was just the latest victim. It was one great big FU, Al.
Conservatives everywhere are soaking in their rose bath this morning, savoring every sweet moment.

On the other hand Liberals are alternating between dealing with their spinning heads and their crying jags.

it don’t matter what they think. Trump has neutered the entire leftist cabal. MSM, NGOs, Academics, the works. They can say whatever they want because they have already called him every bad word they know. They have nothing left to say.

He is driving them into a state of perpetual conniption – and it serves his purpose, because it destroys their credibility – and a big part of the country loves it!

”JC reflections
The truly astonishing thing about all this is how little climate heretics – such as myself, Roger Pielke, and Matt Ridley – actually diverge from the consensus science position: RP Jr. hews strictly to the IPCC consensus; Matt Ridley is on the lukewarm side of the IPCC consensus, and I have stated that the uncertainties are too large to justify high confidence in the consensus statements.”

In any case consensus is not science but policy.

From the point of views of my own, based on experiences, I have found that any open-minded approach to solve the cause of the recent climate warming can not support the climate model results adopted by IPCC; the model results seem to be uncertain and deeply overestimated, as Judith Curry et al have already claimed. In my comment https://judithcurry.com/2016/11/21/the-real-war-on-science/#comment-826262 I have proved that the recent warming of climate has been dominated by natural warming where any influence of anthropogenic CO2 emissions can not be distinguished from zero:

At first, there in the Rio conference 1992 was stated that there is lack of full scientific certainty concerning the believed anthropogenic warming.

At second, the share of anthropogenic CO2 from fossile fuels in the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere is minimal.

At third, as I have already in my comment above claimed, I belong to the group, individuals of which claim that the influence on climate warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 from burning of fossile fuels is so minimal that its influence on climate warming can not be distinguished from zero.

At fourth, the current climate models do not work. By using the climate models, IPCC has not managed to forcast or hindcast trends of global temperatures.

At fifth, the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere has been controlled by sea surface warming. In my comment https://judithcurry.com/2011/08/04/carbon-cycle-questions/#comment-198992 I have proved, that the recent increase of CO2 content in atmosphere has been caused by global warming of oceanic sea surfaces, especially in the areas where CO2 sinks on sea surface are; sea surfaces on the areas of CO2 sinks are warming by lag compared to climate warming.

At sixth, trends of CO2 contents in atmosphere follow trends of global temperatures and not vice versa.

At seventh, Climate sensitivity is not any threat. The climate sensitivity (i.e. increase of glogal climate temperature, when atmospheric CO2 content has been doubled) assessed by IPCC – on the basis of climate models results – is uncertain and exaggerated. For instance Judith Curry et al. have halved the IPCC climate sensitivity, as they have replaced the climate model results by using results of observations in reality. For instance Scafetta and Lindzen have stated still lower values for climate sensitivity than Judith Curry et al. In addition to the view of my own, there are scientists (e.g. Wojick and Arrak) who says that the climate sensitivity can not be distinguished from zero.

I like victor amd respect his work and have had several pleasant personal email exchanges with him.

I would however describe him as an activist and very involved in the politics as being distinctly left of centre. Nothing wrong with that but it colours his views

. His blog is largely an echo chamber and contrary views are rarely explored. In that respect, although people moan about CE, there are plenty of people arguing with each other here , mostly, but not always, in a civil fashion. However there is no particular bias shown, as sceptics are just as likely to slag off another sceptic as they will a warmist!

To see the degree of concern about where we are with science and with
The politics, you could do no worse than read the article almost directly below the one you commented on ‘ Climate nightmares in amerca’ and the one directly proceeding it about trumps America.

Both would have benefited from a much more objective viewpoint but this sort of over the top reaction is what you get in echo chambers, which is why we need to cultivate the viewpoints of those who disagree with us here.

It will be interesting to see how victor responds to your comments.it would
be great to see him over here more often.

That’s your shortest ever response to any comment ever, which must illustrate the peceptiveness and correctness of my remark. It’s ok, there’s no need to respond , as everything has already been said….

Wag,
This is an exciting time. Hope to not throw out the baby with the bathwater but once it got so very dirty it became harder to clean up. We can still support observational science and maybe go back to unadjusting adjusted temperatures from the past.
Scott

Remember to use it at the Climate anti-free speech trials the warmists recommend.

From the same article:

““When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg,” Roberts said.

Dr. Curry’s site continues to puzzle me. On the one hand, she is a well-respected and highly competent scientist whose published work is well within the mainstream of climate science. Many of her own posts, and some of the posts by others, are likewise authoritative and no more controversial than one might expect on any topic at a research frontier. But other posts, including, occasionally, some of her own, are anything but. Many are by authors who do apparently do not publish, have no discernable professional qualifications, and occasionally, remain anonymous. Moreover, the majority of comments appear to be both uninformed and in all likelihood unpublishable–the writers do not appear to have scientic credentials or background. Far too many links are to web sites, and far too few to journals. Moreover, the tone of the majority of comments (on all sides) is often personal and rancorous–they are unpleasant personal attacks, rather than efforts to inform or invite discussion. The contrast is remarkable. I should add that I am a physicist. My research specialty is fairly technical history of physics, but I do try to keep up with the physics of climate.

CG, disappointed you are sometimes disappointed here. Judith very lightly moderates comments, so that becomes Wysywig. But she thoughtfully vets all guest posts. Submit one and you will see. I suppose you count me as among those fairly frequent guest posters who don’t publish (despite 3 ebooks, two book contributions on nuclear energy, and a peer reviewed paper applying chaos theory to microeconomics), with no discernable credentials despite a JD/MBA from Harvard and 13 issued US patents. At least I am not anonymous. One of my occaisional co-authors, Aplanningengineer, must remain anonymous because he is just that, and a very senior executive to boot, at one of the nation’s largest utilities.

In this post, Scott Adams highlighs a serious bias issue about AGW in a humerous way, and Pielke Jr and Ridley discuss their treatment by the Green Mob. Isn’t climate physics but sure is squarely in the Etc. part of Climate Etc.

Every so often I use one of these sites but they tend to be very specific to certain publishers and topics.

Hansen is one of the good guys as regards making his work open to all, others remain very tightly behind a pay wall
( ps, you won ‘t tell any of the sceptical denizens that I said Hansen is one of the good guys will you?)

And yes, I do support free access to science, particularly if funded by the taxpayers. My opinion is not widely supported by publishers who make billions in profit by charging authors to publish, and charging others to read what is published.

I’m all in favour of a publishing business where you don’t pay authors (they pay you), you don’t pay reviewers (they work for free), and you charge like a wounded buffalo for your publications.

The profit margin is, not unsurprisingly, high. Yes, billions and billions and billions, diverted from research – primarily to ensure a high profile for authors. With the Internet, it is easy to put your research on line. Easy to find, easy to contact the authors (if they actually exist, of course).

If publishers don’t like me accessing any intellectual property that they haven’t paid for, and don’t own, boo hoo! Hide it away. Don’t make it available!

It is odd that you would spend as much time as you did lamenting the lack of credentialed denizens only to ambiguously claim credential yourself. Worse still, it is odd you would ambiguously castigate denizens for their inability or unwillingness to inform while yourself declining to do any informing.

What difference do your own credentials make if you had no intention of offering up some information on physics?

Perhaps you have no interest in knowing why there are so many coming to this site who do not present or possess what you might deem the proper credentials in order to enjoy the privilege of voicing their opinion. I wonder if that reason might have something to do with the increasing volume of the insufferable priest class sect who believe that only they hold the privilege to voice their opinion and the rest of the deplorable’s should just shut up and listen to those who talk like they don’t know what a paragraph is.

Despite the fact that Dr. Curry is eminently credentialed she has seemingly not allowed those framed pieces of paper to cloud the fact that she is just as human as the rest of us and that we all share this planet together. She also seems to be aware of the fact that the politicization of climate change has forced the issue out of science and academia and into the public theater and she appears to understand that in that public theater everybody has a voice and a right to be heard.

I am fairly certain that no one is forcing you to listen to the unwashed masses, and it would be nice if there was some prescient gift of reading that would allow us all to skip all the nonsense and just get to the important parts. Such a talent or skill would have saved me innumerable hours. Alas, the world doesn’t work that way and any illusions that it does tend to lead to more priest class nonsense.

What comments do you consider the most egregiously uninformed? I’m curious as to what your sources are that are more “informed” than the uninformed sources here. If you provide some examples, we can do some side by side comparisons on the quality
of the studies and data.

He appears eminently qualified to talk wth authority on a range of physics subjects.

Judith is always open to publishing interesting articles that invoke discussion. Perhaps you have a particular topic you would like to challenge the denizens with, who range from the ultra sceptical to those who believe all that the IPCC Publishes?

Your article will be read and discussed with vigour and those we enjoy the most are those where the author engages with the comments.so, what topic do you think might be of interest to Judith and the denizens?

“He appears eminently qualified to talk with authority on a range of physics subjects. 😉”

Fixed that for ya. Someone might think you’re serious without a winkey.

Gearhart was a history teacher. Just happened to be physics. If you want quotes from Svante Arrhenius he’s your guy but that’s about as close as he comes to climate science or relevant physics. An emeritus whose physics degree is over 50 years old who last contributed to experimental or theoretical physics was in 1979 might still be “up to date” but he certainly can’t prove it on paper.

I’d be willing to bet that people like me (retired computer scientist since 2000 at age 43) who’ve been obsessed with global warming science for 15+ years are a helluva lot more up to date. Gearhart’s major malfunction is he isn’t well enough informed himself to judge the expertise of others.

On the one hand, she is a well-respected and highly competent scientist whose published work is well within the mainstream of climate science.

Nope.

Certainly highly competent. But AFAIK the “Stadium Wave” work was not only outside the mainstream, but was subjected to some efforts to block its publication. I don’t know the details, and perhaps I misunderstood Prof. Curry’s comments in that regard, but that was my impression.

Clayton – Did you read the “About” page? Do you think the forum is inconsistent with that description? Are your concerns around why a scientist would provide such a forum as this or are you concerned about the way it’s being done. Also there you seem to be confusing comments and postings.

Certainly many of us would like to see less rancour, higher quality, greater authority, better questions and ideas,… but separating the wheat from the chaff is a lot of work and you also run the risk of losing wheat. Personally I’d rather sort through some chaff versus missing a particularly valuable idea that someone else might have screened out.

Surely if you ran the site, you would do it differently and there would be some gains and some losses. That would be your call. If I found your site of no value, I’d ignore it. If it were of some value, I would be sure to offer appreciation along with any criticisms and I would not expect your vision for the site to match mine.

Me I like the articles and the follow up discussions, when I can follow them. I like to hear alternative views and it seems valuable to me that people are able to trip themselves up by what they say. Valid criticism is worthwhile whatever the source. Clayton – you may have some valid criticism and advice underlying your posted comments here, but for them to have value – you need to better specify your concerns.

Clayton, perhaps you could submit a guest post on the history of climate science. I’m willing to bet that you’d learn from the comments, despite you’d likely find some of them taxing too. And most likely we Denizens would also learn something. You might ‘get it’ more, when you’re part of the process.

Your opinion, Clayton, is no more important than the opinion of anyone else on this blog IMO. However, the essential qualities of an effective comment are:(a)interest; (b)relevance; and (c)respect for your readers and unfortunately, your comment possessed none of these qualities.

” But other posts, including, occasionally, some of her own, are anything but.”

My thoughts exactly. I put it down to the fact that there is very little climate change contrarian science to discuss. So the Climate Etc blog has to be padded out with politically-biased and sometimes anti-science opinion pieces. I see this in other “contrarian” blogs as well.

The cynic in me thinks it is a part of a campaign to maintain the illusion of disagreement on this subject.

“I put it down to the fact that there is very little climate change contrarian science to discuss. So the Climate Etc blog has to be padded out with politically-biased and sometimes anti-science opinion pieces.”

Even if it is true what you claim, that there is very little climate change contrarian science to discuss, your latter point misses the point. Whether or not there is little or much to discuss in regards to the science, this issue has pushed smack dab in the middle of public policy and as such a discussion on really scary man caused climate change cannot be held without discussing the politics. I remain ambivalent on how much of this is actually about the science, but I’ve become certain that as long as it all about the restrictive policies, then it is all about the politics.

Go ahead, call that “anti-science” all you want. I’ve seen denizens in this site refer to government cuts in funding of science as tantamount to eliminating science. That right there ain’t science.

What to do about climate change is indeed a political issue. It is about fossil fuel rationing which is unpleasant. It is a discussion we should be having as the rationing will affect everyone. Unfortunately the propagandists are trying to derail the political discussion by discrediting the science. The longer they can do this, the more they can push serious discussion of the fossil fuel rationing into the future.

“I’ve seen denizens in this site refer to government cuts in funding of science as tantamount to eliminating science.”

We don’t. Don’t give up though, sooner or later we’ll find something we can agree on.

“What to do about climate change is indeed a political issue. It is about fossil fuel rationing which is unpleasant. It is a discussion we should be having as the rationing will affect everyone.”

I’m not convinced it is a political issue. It can only be a political issue if and/or when we’ve gone from consensus as evidence to direct evidence while also effectively demonstrating that the mitigation can only be accomplished through government force. Couched in your language, however, is something we can agree upon. It is a discussion we should be having.

“Unfortunately the propagandists are trying to derail the political discussion by discrediting the science.”

Like Senator Wirth’s political theater starring James Hansen?

As to your assertion that I made a straw man argument by telling you I’ve seen denizens refer to government cuts in funding of science as eliminating science. This I have seen. “Eliminating science” are words I have read. Beginning tomorrow, I will, when I can, try and find that for you, but maybe Jim D. will do me a favor and come to my defense on that. I’m pretty sure he is one who views the cutting of government funding of science as being tantamount to eliminating science.

“JC reflections
The truly astonishing thing about all this is how little climate heretics – such as myself, Roger Pielke, and Matt Ridley – actually diverge from the consensus science position: RP Jr. hews strictly to the IPCC consensus; Matt Ridley is on the lukewarm side of the IPCC consensus, and I have stated that the uncertainties are too large to justify high confidence in the consensus statements.”

Judith:

Matt Ridley is not a climate scientist.
Or indeed scientist of any sort.
He is not qualified to talk of climate.

Climate is the average of weather. Gavin is maybe not uniquely qualified to calculate averages, but I’ll allow it requires basic arithmetic.

Michael Mann claimed to be a Noble Laureate, and a climate scientist. You decide, which, if either, statement might be fact rather than “factiness”.

Maybe you think that Newton couldn’t think about gravity, because he wasn’t a gravity scientist? I don’t believe Einstein was a relativity scientist, or that he even had a PhD when he thought about time and space and suchlike.

Charles Darwin (Origin of Species etc.) had a Bachelor of Arts, at least.

Trying to mystify the non existent CO2 GHE into existence is just bizarre.

Tony B:
‘Matt Ridley is not a climate scientist. Or indeed scientist of any sort.’

Your wiki link says he has a degree and Phd in the field of Zoology from Oxford, which for historic reasons still awards ‘Arts’ degrees for science subjects.

‘And actually neither is Roger Pielke’

Your Pielke is broken (I think your hyperlinking missed the dot at the end). But the actual link says that from 1993 to 2001 he was a ‘staff scientist’ in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“Your wiki link says he has a degree and Phd in the field of Zoology from Oxford, which for historic reasons still awards ‘Arts’ degrees for science subjects.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley
“Ridley …. attended Eton College from 1970–75 and then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study zoology.[1] He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with First Class Honours and continued with research on the mating system of the common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) supervised by Chris Perrins for his PhD in 1983.[4]”

“I have a financial interest in coal mining on my family’s land. The details are commercially confidential, but I have always been careful to disclose that I have this interest in my writing when it is relevant; I am proud that the coal mining on my land contributes to the local and national economy; and that my income from coal is not subsidized and not a drain on the economy through raising energy prices. I deliberately do not argue directly for the interests of the modern coal industry and I consistently champion the development of gas reserves, which is a far bigger threat to the coal-mining industry than renewable energy can ever be. So I consistently argue against my own financial interest.

Pielke earned a B.A. in mathematics (1990), an M.A. in public policy (1992), and a Ph.D. in political science, all from the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to his positions at CU-Boulder, from 1993 to 2001 he was a staff scientist[2] in the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From 2002 to 2004 Pielke was Director of Graduate Studies for the CU-Boulder Graduate Program in Environmental Studies and in 2001 students selected him for the Outstanding Graduate Advisor Award.

Both are “climate scientists” according to the loose definition used today (in the IPCC for instance). One studies how it works, one studies impacts.

As Willis notes, you have to defend what you said, not what you’d like us to think you said.

You said regarding Matt Ridley: ‘…Or indeed [a] scientist of any sort.’

I didn’t claim he was a climate scientist. I noted your claim was wrong, as stated by your own link.

Regarding Pielke you said ‘And actually neither is Roger Pielke’

While it’s ambiguous in this case whether your intended context is for a ‘scientist of any sort’, or just a ‘climate scientist’, your own provided link (yes your hyperlinking missed the dot at the end which is why one needs to cut-and-paste) appears to contradict both these anyhow, and most certainly the first.

Anton Lavoisier – a tax collector; the father of modern chemistry
Benjamin Franklin – publisher, diplomat; remember the kite experiment?
John Dalton – a school teacher; invented modern atomic theory
Michael Faraday – a bookbinder
James Joule – a brewer; discovered the law of conservation of energy
Tsiolkovsky – a school teacher; father of astronautics

You missed off the “balancing” side of the scales with the thousands of scientists contributing to the IPCC AR’s.

Does your logic tell you that your side is heaviest? (sarc actually)

And the fact that pioneers in the early of science advancement where necessarily “amateur”, does not also strike you as a bizarre argument?
They were the “giants shoulders I stand on” to “see far” (Newton).
And why GHG theory is empirical since them.

Ask Richard Lindzen who writes the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. I assure you not the thousands of scientists you are so proud of. You don’t seem to know how the IPCC works. Lindzen had been lead author of the Assessment Reports three times.

My list tells me your amateur list is irrelevant.

Your assertion they must necessarily be amateurs is bizarre. Universities in Europe exist since the 13th century. Scientists or ‘natural philosophers’ worked as professors in the universities. Your quote of Newton is ignorance of history. All the scientists on my list came after Newton. Newton himself was a professor at Cambridge University.

“Ask Richard Lindzen who writes the IPCC Summary for Policymakers. I assure you not the thousands of scientists you are so proud of. You don’t seem to know how the IPCC works. Lindzen had been lead author of the Assessment Reports three times.”

But Lindzen is a Climate sceptic!
And even if he were not – how can one man misrepresent the science of thousands (in the AR’s)?
Oh, and I’m not proud of them specifically – I just note that they VASTLY outnumber the “Heretical” ones.

“Your assertion they must necessarily be amateurs is bizarre. Universities in Europe exist since the 13th century. Scientists or ‘natural philosophers’ worked as professors in the universities. Your quote of Newton is ignorance of history. All the scientists on my list came after Newton. Newton himself was a professor at Cambridge University.”

You seem to have missed the point, either that or I did re your post.

Assuming you meant that nothing is to prevent a “climate heretic” from making a breakthrough discovery was being argued of because of those early scientists….
I said that they were the first in their field and COULD make breakthroughs (Tyndall, Arrhenius FI).
I do know Newton went to Uni BTW: I live in the country he came from Ta.
Don’t accuse me of being of ignorance of anything please and I wont of you. That OK?

Really:
Please link to a reputable journal that uses “empirical data” to deny that GHG theory does not do what it has been shown to do in the atmosphere.
Oh, and as you talk of empirical, then you should know that models are not needed at all.
We use them becasue we learn from them.

Thus:
With forcings amended to match those that were not foreseen at time of model runs….

“plus 30,000 more scientists, engineers, doctors in the Oregon Petition”

And where are the science papers from them.
If they are experts in the field – that is where they would count.
Opinions are worthless.
As worthless as a pub debate about religion.
As I said, AGW is founded on the empirical.
It’s not religious.
*sceptics* are the ones who are “religious”. Believing they will find the evidence of it.

“As I said, AGW is founded on the empirical.” Very few (with some exceptions of course) ‘deny’ AGW. Where the debate resumes lies in issues of extent, harm (vs some benefit……denied elsewhere), policy, and others. Of this presumably you’re aware.

One thing you have gotten correct. Which makes your previous statement about all those “scientist” at the weather channel the height of hypocrisy. How many of those ‘scientists’ have published papers OR even done any research on climate? Weather, sure. It is their job (along with being pretty in front of a camera).

JPZ,
Your kind words are well appreciated. Been wallowing too long in the mud (ugh, politics) and need to up my standards. Matthew, JimD, You, and a few others are examples of better behavior no matter the disagreements (or the sporadic commonalities).

A cautionary tale.
“The scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all–that his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.” – Mark Twain

You mean where a majority of climate scientists agree with a scientific theory based on the scientific evidence? It’s astounding that you keep pushing that climate change denier talking point. I know full well what you would say if there WASN’T a consensus.

What Dr Curry is saying is science she does not personally agree with is dogma. Basically a rhetorical insult, nothing more.

“You mean where a majority of climate scientists agree with a scientific theory based on the scientific evidence?”

Oh, I don’t know…maybe I mean where a majority of physicists agree with the theory of luminiferous aether, a theory riddled with as much debate as your precious really scary man made climate change theory.

If it be true that the temper of the mind and the passions of the heart are extremely different in different climates, the laws ought to be in relation both to the variety of those passions and to the variety of those tempers.’”

A climate theory.

Doesn’t seem to have been supported by reproducible experiments. Doesn’t actually mention CO2, or the GHE.

No problem, at least it’s better than the non existent Warmist theory. Or maybe it is the Warmist theory – cunningly disguised!

“What else would you call “climate science”?
It sure as hell isn’t science, it more closely resembles religion.”

OK Is QT dogma?
Is GR/SR dogma?

Is any other empirical science dogma?

If you want to call science dogma then OK
In reality it is something that has stood the test of time in terms of observation and theory.
Was Newton’s laws dogma?
Until Einstein came along?
Nothing remotely comes close to explaining the current warming.

There is no “religion” about it.
It is just how scince proceeds.
Accepted until something else comes along that explains better.
What is written in the Bible, Koran or any other book purportedly coming from your “best friend” is no more correct than that from my “best friend.”
Why ?
Because there is no evidence observation and theory to explain.

What IS “religion” is you and others here taking a contrarian view because you don’t like the consequences of AGW.
You don’t accept the science because of that.
And you do that DESPITE the observational/theoretical science.

Contrarians, spend their time looking for squirrels/unicorns in order to validate their, yes, “religious” belief that AGW theory is wrong, because (pick any/all of the usual myths).

It comes back to these 3 choices…
a)All the world’s Earth scientists (not just climate) are incompetent.
b)All the world’s Earth scientists are fraudulent and perpetrating a scam.
c)All the world’s Earth scientists know more than you.

That the answer is not blazingly intuitive gives QED of the “religious” nature of climate “heresy”.

Where are the scientists finding a flaw?
Delingpole, Rose, Ball, Tisdale, Eschenbach, Booker, Monckton?
Hardly.
Not just Curry, Spencer, Christy Svensmark, Lindzen and a few others.

Ones doing science, published in reputable peer-reviewed journals and not ideologically motivated gainsayers who think they can come up with different conclusions to the scientists that have researched the data they then twist.
Or cherry-pick the likes of the “Gold standard” of the multiply “altered” tropospheric temp sat data that still does not agree with radiosonde data.
That can only be because it’s the coolest, or “we can trust them” – which then verifies the idea that you think others are dishonest/corrupt/incompetent.

Science is not done here or at Watts’ or Spencer’s.
It is done in peer-reviewed journals and others then finding fault with other papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Only a dogmatist would pulls the stunt you have with the above sentence.
cat argues that “climate science” – being diligent to use quotation marks to indicate he uses that phrase only as others are using that phrase – more closely resembles religion than it does science and you use a straw man to misrepresent cat’s argument.

“Nothing remotely comes close to explaining the current warming.”

That’s what my priest used to tell me about explaining God. Nothing else came remotely close to explaining it, he would say and then genuflect and we would both say Amen.

“What is written in the Bible, Koran or any other book…Because there is no evidence observation and theory to explain.”

True enough, it is why they rely so heavily upon a consensus, and they definitely got them a consensus.

“What IS “religion” is you and others here taking a contrarian view because you don’t like the consequences of AGW.”

More dogmatism from the Monsignor Banton. If you like the consequences of (D)AGW (Dangerous anthropogenic global warming) then why are you insisting the use of government force is needed to engage in behavior modification in the name of mitigation? Oh wait, is that what you meant? Did you mean skeptics don’t like the consequences of grossly expanded government bodies in order to enforce behavior modification and restructure economies? I’m sorry Fadda, I thought thought you meant the skeptics don’t like the consequences of really very scary global warming. That’s what you don’t like, ain’t it Fadda Banton?

The skeptics neither like nor dislike (D)AGW, they simply question the outlandish claims being made by the dogmatists.

“Contrarians, spend their time looking for squirrels/unicorns in order to validate their, yes, “religious” belief that AGW theory is wrong, because (pick any/all of the usual myths).”

Gee, I dunno Fadda, I can’t speak for the other contrarians but me personally? I spend my time looking at things like how much money the US federal government spent on the narrow research of anthorpogenic warming (upwards of $40 billion) and how that might encourage bias rather than restrain it. I gotta tell ya Fadda, it seems kind of suspicious to me that a government whose natural inclinations are to aggregate and expand their power spends a gob smacking amount of money on human caused warming in order to convince the public that the government needs a gob smacking amount of more power so they can stop the public from acting like a public.

Tony, it’s called doing science, not that many climatologists know what that is.
I started with an observation, it cools off quickly when the sun goes down, to measuring how much, and key was how cold the sky was all night, even after the rate of cooling slowed down, which was quite obvious in the nightly temp record. Tony, you’re a meteorologist? How many times have you looked that the cooling rate on clear calm nights, and you wonder why the rate changed? Obviously none, or climate science would have figured out cooling is regulated by water vapor.

Now, it’s okay, you’ve probably never done any electronics, or spent 15 years training engineers on the use of simulation tools. But it’s obvious. So, a few days of data from another published climate paper of nightly cooling, and it was all there to see, if you’d recognize it. It’s like Einstein’s eclipse photo, it’s proof. If you have a clue ;)

“Tony, you’re a meteorologist? How many times have you looked that the cooling rate on clear calm nights, and you wonder why the rate changed? Obviously none, or climate science would have figured out cooling is regulated by water vapor.”

I,be been at too many night-shifts to remember and, I didn’t,t wonder. I was expecting it. That is what weather forecasters do, else the squadron would have to divert en-mass.
Of course WV regulates coolingEspecially at the surface.
That is not the point.
CO2 does too.
And in the absence of large quantities vis at altitude and over deserts/poles it it has a sig effect, which the science has known of since Tyndall.
Can’t you wrap yer brain on there being another gas that has a GHE?
And it is THE most important because it is NON-condensing.
And WV is regulated by temp because it IS condensing.
Therefore WV can drive warming as well as be a feed-back.
Look at Lacis at al to see the consequences of removing it from the atmosphere.

“Now, it’s okay, you’ve probably never done any electronics, or spent 15 years training engineers on the use of simulation tools. But it’s obvious. So, a few days of data from another published climate paper of nightly cooling, and it was all there to see, if you’d recognize it. It’s like Einstein’s eclipse photo, it’s proof. If you have a clue ;)

I have actually – did it up to degree level before switching into the UKMO.
And worked in the engineering industry for a short while in on a sandwich course.

JPZ:
“Only a dogmatist would pulls the stunt you have with the above sentence.
cat argues that “climate science” – being diligent to use quotation marks to indicate he uses that phrase only as others are using that phrase – more closely resembles religion than it does science and you use a straw man to misrepresent cat’s argument.”

No, just a statement of fact.
You are equating current climate science with “dogma”.
I questioned (rhetorically) that QT And SR/GR could be called “dogma”.
But they will remain the best theories, because they fit the observations.
That will be the case for AGW theory until something fits better.
Not because you or any other ideologically challenged *sceptic* says so.

“That’s what my priest used to tell me about explaining God. Nothing else came remotely close to explaining it, he would say and then genuflect and we would both say Amen.”

Again, another statement of fact.
I accept you wouldn’t know that though if you only read the *science* on sceptical blogs.
No, I believe “Amen” gets mumbled by peeps in cold stone buildings on a Sunday.
Religion is the belief in something that has no proof.
Climate science is founded on the empirical science of the GHE discovered by Tyndall and Arrenhius.
Models not needed.

PS: what does Fadda mean?
And should it be a pejorative – then I reciprocate.

“The skeptics neither like nor dislike (D)AGW, they simply question the outlandish claims being made by the dogmatists.”

And so you should question them.
The more “outlandish claims”, by the nature of probability, are unlikely to be correct.
I again point out the IPCC’s 1.5 -4.5C.
Haven’t you ever noticed that “outlandish claims” sell media.
If you live on the UK FI the likes of the Express have a “worst winter for 100 years” on the front page every late Autumn.
What you shouldn’t do is think that is credible.
Same with climate science.
1.5 to 4.5.

Gee, I dunno Fadda, I can’t speak for the other contrarians but me personally? I spend my time looking at things like how much money the US federal government spent on the narrow research of anthorpogenic warming (upwards of $40 billion) and how that might encourage bias rather than restrain it. I gotta tell ya Fadda, it seems kind of suspicious to me that a government whose natural inclinations are to aggregate and expand their power …… convince the public that the government needs a gob smacking amount of more power so they can stop the public from acting like a public.”

Making with the Fadda again. Tell you what – I’ll presume it’s a complement and call you “Fadda”, Fadda.
“not with my tax dollars” again, Ah diddums.
Ooh, the UN via the IPCC is out to subject the world into a socialist government eh?

Our generation needs to sort It out for the ones following.
Not this one or likely the next one, as the “outlandish” forecasts are far into the future.
See ya Fadda.

“PS: what does Fadda mean?
And should it be a pejorative – then I reciprocate.”

Fadda is my impersonation of Bostonian or New York Irish Catholics. I am too Catholic to use Father or Fadda as a pejorative, but not so dogmatic as a Catholic (they call me an a la carte Catholic) to use it as a wink. Feel free to reciprocate, plenty of people have accused me of being a priest since I was a kid. I take no offense at it nor do I mean any when I call others priest. It is, however, a criticism. There is a place and a time for the priest class, I do not believe modern science is that time or place.

“No, just a statement of fact.”

No brother, it was a straw man. Cat did not argue that science is dogma. I’ll grant you that your exact wording was “If you want to call science dogma then OK”, but even then it is a straw man. Cat argued that quotation mark – climate science – end quotation mark is dogma.

“You are equating current climate science with “dogma”.

Actually, I’m equating the use of “denialist” to label skeptics with dogma, I’m equating the suspect use of words and phrases such as “heat trapping gas” with dogma. I’m equating the manufacturing of consensus with dogma. I’m equating the use of a straw man to conflate dangerous climate change with that manufactured consensus with dogma I’m equating the solemn nature of adherents speaking in terms of high level of certainty in regards to an average of averages to describe heat with dogma. I’m equating the brazen campaign to gain the Holy See’s endorsement of really, very very scary climate change with dogma.

“I questioned (rhetorically) that QT And SR/GR could be called “dogma”.”

Sure brother, I would question that too, but I would assert that the use of QT and SR/GR as an underlying foundation for all that I just described above should then be equated with dogma. I would also point out that I did not read anywhere where cat called QT and SR/GR as dogma. But maybe I missed that, I just kind of doubt it.

“But they will remain the best theories, because they fit the observations.”

Take that above statement out of the context of government policy and it is a perfectly reasonable statement. Put a scientist in front of the camera sitting alongside politicians and broadcast that same statement to sell painful policies and I question just how scientific that is. What is always missing from that kind of “science” is the evidence that ‘nothing remotely comes close to explaining’ how anyone or anything can resolve this issue better than government force.

Tony, do you need me to place words and phrases like “government force” in all caps so you can better distinguish that from gripes about taxation?

“That will be the case for AGW theory until something fits better.
Not because you or any other ideologically challenged *sceptic* says so.”

Conversely, it will be the people, regardless of their ideological bent, who will decide whether or not “AGW theory” is sufficient enough to merit action. That will remain the case until something replaces the current constitution in place, not because you or any other foaming at the mouth ideological *technocrat* say’s so.

“Again, another statement of fact.”

Yep, dat’s exactly what Fadda Finley used to always say.

“I accept you wouldn’t know that though if you only read the *science* on sceptical blogs.”

I began with reading the IPCC Assessment Reports, I also read several reports put out by the NAS before feeling comfortable enough in reading the actual studies or papers being cited by the IPCC, and then, feeling overwhelmed, kept looking for literature and sites that could help me better understand what I was reading. I am no doubt an amateur, a hopeless rookie stumbling and bumbling through it all, I just ain’t no dilettante. I do, however, resent the fact that I had to commit to learning all of this in order to make an informed decision in regards to policy and it would have been nice if the advocates of “AGW” were presenting the science honestly and very vocally taking politicians to task when they would dishonestly misrepresent that science.

If the cause is just there ain’t no reason to lie in order to sell that cause.”

“No, I believe “Amen” gets mumbled by peeps in cold stone buildings on a Sunday.”

Dude, are you Catholic too? I definitely mumble that in cold stone buildings on a Sunday. But, I’ve also been to Baptist revivals where the enunciation of Amen is deafening. As a Catholic, even the mediocre one that I am, I can’t help but want to shush those loud Baptist’s and their testimonials and ask them to show some respect and mumble that stuff like we Catholics do.

“Religion is the belief in something that has no proof.”

By that definition so is science. All of us take something upon faith. Logic cannot prove that logic is true and the scientific method cannot prove the scientific method is true. We take that upon faith.

“RP Jr and Matt Ridley provide appalling examples of the personal and arguably unethical attacks from other scientists, journalists, elected politicians and others with government appointments.

Scott Adams provides some genuine (and as always, humorous) insights into the psychology behind the dynamics of the climate debate.”

“Unethical attacks” you mean like the ones against Michael Mann and others?

Scott Adams is a cartoonist. Cartoonists are notorious teases, it is the way they get publicity and sell their cartoons. Comparing a scientific consensus with a political poll has got to be a false equivalence fallacy (if that is the correct term).

Michael Mann invites ridicule. Claiming to a Nobel laureate, equating himself to men and women who go in harm’s way to defend and protect our nation by portraying himself as a warrior in the front lines, regularly attacking any who do not genuflect at the alter of Mann, the list is near endless. The doctor is an egotistical little puck who gained fame at an early age by having the good fortune to produce a graph that the IPCC latched onto as the perfect cover art for their report. It is ironic that he in truth is the poster boy for what is wrong with science today.

On the question of experts, I have seen many here flouting others by touting their credentials. As if it is credentials that make an expert. In truthiness, however, the factiness of the matter is that my mother had no credentials as a mother while raising me, but by the time I had reached my teenage years she had become quite expert, mistakes and all, at raising me. It is folly to equate credentialism with expertise, and it is even more folly to surrender one’s own desire to know, in exchange for the information of experts.

Information is not knowledge. Information passed on as knowledge becomes tainted by that disinformation. Expert is generally defined as a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative of or skill in a particular field. An expert is someone with knowledge, but all too often and increasingly the credentialed appear to be more and more authorities on information. What they actually know becomes harder and harder to discern.

To make matters worse, there is the problem of credential inflation where the increase in credentials has the perverse effect of devaluing the credentials. This has led to a miasma of credentialism where instead of evaluating a person directly based upon that persons own ability to demonstrate their knowledge, credentials will do. Further, access passes or licenses become a form of credentials. So, the security clearance granted Hillary Clinton was seen as her credentials to have security clearance and it is assumed the credentialed know what they’ve undertaken.

A medical license is a credential. The McLaughlin – Sherouse List puts the medical industry at number 9 on the top ten most regulated industries in the U.S. with 11,505 different restrictions. Presumably this is to protect the patient. But in 2000 Barbara Starfield published a study in JAMA showing that iatrogenicide (death by doctoring) had risen to become the fourth leading cause of death. In 2016, consumer reports told us that iatrogenicide had risen to the 3rd leading cause of death.

In case law, prior to the 1970’s the use of forensics science was a somewhat rare phenomenon. By the mid-’70’s prosecutors had figured out that by touting these fancy schmancy experts in front of a jury this helped them gain convictions. Not that it was uncontroversial in the Seventies and not that it ain’t controversial now. I don’t know if he coined the word, but Peter Huber sure seems to have popularized the phrase “junk science.”

Junk science describes inherently unreliable scientific evidence or the kind of science that has been so stretched to its limits it is no longer recognizable as science. In Daubert v Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals the Supreme Court sought to address the controversy regarding junk science, by adopting a strict reliability test that does not seem to have ended the controversy. The Daubert standard, however, superseded the Frye standard (Frye v United States), but several states still rely upon that Frye standard. In case law the whole issue remains a junkyard.

9th Circuit Justice Alex Kozinski regularly bemoans the reliance on junk science and argues that it has falsely convicted people for decades. This problem isn’t science, the problem is credentialism. It might make the credentialed feel better about themselves to make their drive by posts in their metaphorical Dodge Challenger with their arm sticking outstretched from the drivers seat window with their finger pointed like a gat turned sideways, but the framed credentials as license plates is always a nice touch. It just doesn’t do much to soften the gang like activity.

Agreement that W.C. has reasonably considered experts in meteorology. I’ve actually not researched their climate creds, but maybe you have.

W.C. is chastised for being biased from skeptics. For some, Brietbart is the new source of ‘commandments’ but I assure you it’s not for this poster. When I trace back their ‘research’ they rely on biased sources not nearly balanced and IMO much worse than so called MSM (most, not all).

Libertarians have the right to a ‘voice’. Much as occurs in the climate debate, media has definitive leanings. That’s as acceptable for Brietbart as it is for HuffPo (or Guardian). And yes, there is that ‘standing’ discussion. None should be viewed as ‘sources’ but instead considered as outlets. The sources are the sources and all should be traced back to those.

There is ‘post-truth’ availability for those who seek same, no matter which ‘side’ one prefers.

The very large assumption of this article is that scientists will somehow be ‘punished’ for their activities. It follows then that one must ascertain those ‘activities’. Finally, once ascertained if (large if) outside the purview of science what would occur.

Presumably if the ‘activities’ lie inside the purview of science nothing will occur in the form of ‘punishment’. Because if it did then that would be ‘politicizing’ science and that’s something for which skeptics will not stand.

I am a chemist. I tried to explain the concept of measurement error in predictive modeling and how the level of uncertainty increases as multiple variables with multiple measurements are used in a model and that this too applied to climate models. The vitriol hurled at me was huge. But this is common in my job, I have to determine the sensitivity of any model or system I create. I have to determine what is a statistically valid answer and what is below the system’s “detection limits.” You would think I was the only person who took statistics in the whole universe…..

This is a psychological phenomena prevalent in climate science where common sense and critical thinking is replaced by motivated reasoning and religious beliefs. I just read a study on sea level rise. The number of variables, assumptions, adjustments etc etc was well over 100. There are a lot of people
who routinely fool themselves into accepting
as fact something that is inherently
unattainable.

Temperature measurement, using a solid state probe or fluke has at best .02 degree C sensitivity. Multiple that by the number of measurements, plus any smoothing or adjustments, plus any “System error” such as bad placement, bad monitoring, etc. There is no way the model can predict much of anything below a 5 degree C change. Sea level measurement is even worse based on monthly lunar cycles, seasonality, weather patterns, etc. Variability alone invalidates the sea level assumptions. Again, this basic undergrad stats…we are not talking doing the testing of the data for outliers, Hypothesis testing, or any of the other statistical tests which should be applied.

Sorry Christina, you’ll never make a “climate scientist” with a rigorous approach like that!

You are dealing with a self-selected group that is capable of asserting that a purported difference of one hundredth of one degree centigrade in the temperature of the Earth’s surface over one year is sufficient to claim that a given year is the “hottest evah!” and justifies the imposition of billions of dollars in taxes and subsidies for worthless generation equipment, and that wouldn’t recognise an error bar if you whacked them over the head with it.

I had one insist that the temperature of the oceans down to 2,000 metres had increased by three hundredths of a degree centigrade since the 1950s once…

So when I sign my name to any data or calculation, I can be hauled into court. I am certifying the results. The FDA would have my butt in federal prison if I fudged anything, did not have reams of back-up, and have a series of others check my work. I am constantly amazed what is allowed to occur in academic arenas, and people/media/others call businesses out for being corrupt….

For a national hero, John was unusually alive – spiritually and intellectually:

“We are placed here with certain talents and capabilities. It is up to each of us to use those talents and capabilities as best you can,” Glenn said on April 9, 1959. “If you do that, I think there is a power greater than any of us that will place the opportunities in our way, and if we use our talents properly, we will be living the kind of life we should live.”

Sorry for the primitive nature of the pictures, I was in a hurry, didn’t expect to have to draw a picture.

As you can see, there are two separate actions (processes). Breaking and extracting, and releasing.

Now, there’s good evidence (although questioned) that both the GRU and the FSB broke in and extracted data. It’s also possible (likely IMO) that others did so (“Other 1” below).

It’s also possible that private actors broke into one of the Russian agencies data and extracted their own copies (“Other 2″ and Other 3” below). (Note that the lines for extraction lack arrows, but you can see the direction.)

We don’t know who did the 2nd stage. There’s little evidence of Russian involvement, and what there is looks more like a frame than anything else.

AK – the Dimowits are just pissed because Russia foiled their attempt to unseat Assad. Of course, Russia are also kicking major ISIS butt. It seems to me we in the US (and Europe) were much better off when the dictators kept these people in line.

Actually, not. They needed Russia’s help for the Iran deal. It also took China and the EU as significant economic players. Also remember Iran forces are fighting IS in Iraq. It would be premature for Trump to blow that all up before IS is defeated and while Iraq are allied to Iran. There’s a lot of chess pieces, and Trump doesn’t know how to play, nor is he listening to intelligence or state department experts.

Democrats needed “Russian” help in giving the farm to Iran in a “deal”? LOL! I do not care for democrats, but even I do not think they need help in giving away the farm. They are good at doing that themselves.

At least American troops are not being lost in Libya and Syria. Those countries are destroying themselves because they can live neither with nor without dictators, and that is not America’s problem. The refugees may be, but not their civil wars.

Hmm. Wonder who’ll own this: “The editorial said Trump ought to read some books on U.S.-China relations. It also warned that if the U.S. abandoned the “One China” policy, Beijing would have no reason to “put peace above using force to take back Taiwan.”

“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘One China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” he “(Trump)” said.

The comment elicited a swift response from the Communist Party-controlled press, with the Global Times, a newspaper known for its strident nationalism, writing that Trump is “as ignorant as a child.”

After removing Saddam, there wasn’t much GWB could do to alter that course, which was set in motion by the Iran-friendly Shiites gaining control of the Iraqi government from his elections and then asking the Americans to leave. They were squeezed out.

One person who attended a classified briefing on the intelligence said that the investigators had explained that the malware used in the cyberattack on the D.N.C. matched tools previously used by hackers with proven ties to the Russian government. That sort of “pattern analysis” is common in cyberinvestigations, though it is not conclusive.

But the intelligence agencies had more: They had managed to identify the individuals from the G.R.U. who oversaw the hacking efforts. That may have come from intercepted conversations, spying efforts, or implants in computer systems that allow the tracking of emails and text messages.

It’s certainly possible that Putin directed the FSB and GRU at different times (one in 2015 and one in 2016) to mount a secret influence operation that would favor Donald Trump’s run for President, and that those normally competent spy agencies executed this secret operation by using not one but two blown threat actor groups (Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear), Russian servers and tool sets, free Russian-hosted email accounts on Yandex, and distributed the files via Wikileaks (a long suspected Russian front). Oh, and also create a FancyBear[.]net website and a character named Guccifer 2.0 who negotiates with reporters and speaks at security conferences. Because, you know, SECRET.

OK, there’s a lot of “blown” stuff here.

But let’s be realistic: internals of the successful campaigns for President and Congress are worthwhile intelligence for any state actor. They don’t have to be enemies, I’m sure even Britain, Israel, even Canada would have liked to have had that intel. It’s a valid espionage target, and not just for enemies.

So whether the FSB (almost certainly) and the GRU (perhaps) were actually behind the identified (i.e. blown) break-ins (“hacking”), they probably got in and got the data. (See picture above.)

But take another look at the NYTimes story:

They had managed to identify the individuals from the G.R.U. who oversaw the hacking efforts.

They’re being very vague with their language here, but technically the “hacking” means penetration and extraction. It says nothing about the 2nd stage. Given that many actors had probably extracted the data, including (possibly) Mr. Trump’s “400 lb guy sitting on his bed”, there’s still no evidence the Russians were behind any leaks.

Except for the small traces that, as I said above (and in July) look more like a frame-up than anything else.

Bottom line, while the CIA may have data implicating Putin in the release, nothing they’ve shown us so far is any better than what an amateur like me was able to pull out of publicly available sites back in July.

Funny, but I can only find one name there that is still current.
The others seem to have flourished at a time when science was in it’s infancy or relatively so.
In fact several began the science.
BTW: you missed out…
Arrenhius
Tyndall

Hadn’t you noticed that people that “if I see so far, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants”
(I you accept that Newton was’t having a dig at Hooke)

Now have In science, a tad more “giants shoulders” to stand on now than he did.
IOW: looking for your squirrel to come from Curry or Svensmark is a bit optimistic.

One thing’s for sure it won’t come from Eschenbach, Ball, Tisdale, Monckton, Rose, Delingpole, Booker, or any other ideologically challenged, err, *sceptic*.

One thing’s for sure it won’t come from Eschenbach, Ball, Tisdale, Monckton, Rose, Delingpole, Booker, or any other ideologically challenged, err, *sceptic*.

Tony, you don’t get it, I’ve already done it.
Just because you don’t understand it, none of you have to.

Mosh, as iirc Rutherford said, if you need statistics, you need a better experiment.
Actually you know what is really funny? You didn’t find it because active systems have funky statistics, so all of your tests failed.
You needed to look at the measurements, and understand what they are telling you. Same issue with novices using simulators, you have to understand what you ask, and in sim world, what should you get back. Most likely the same with why you didn’t catch it with modtran. Didn’t ask the right question under the right conditions.

Maybe you haven’t read the details of Tyndall’s experimental work. As with most GHE enthusiasts, you might prefer Tyndall’s early speculations, rather than his experimental results.

Arrhenius also speculated about the GHE, as he did with eugenics. One experiment, suggested by Arrhenius, involved exposing children to electric fields to increase their intelligence and growth. Although the results were apparently conclusive, the idea doesn’t seem to have been widely adopted.

In any case, what concepts did Tyndall and Arrhenius demolish?

Or are you making a rather silly attempt to appeal to non existent authority? All of Tyndall’s experiments with gases showed the opposite of what you are presumably implying. His experiments were backed up by his observations that the less atmosphere between a thermometer and the Sun, the higher the temperature reading.

No GHE. None. Not even a falsifiable GHE hypothesis, let alone experimental support. I doubt you can even find a scientific straw to grasp. Correct me if I’m wrong.

It is remarkable how few Warmies appear to be aware of the work of Ångström and his assistant Koch, which was considererably more rigorous and revealing than Arrhenius’ efforts which were based on his belief in the luminiferous aether.

Physicists point out that the atmosphere absorbs energy emitted by the Sun. Some of this initially absorbed energy subsequently reaches the surface. Much doesn’t.

Tyndall estimated about 40% absorption, NASA a little less.

Hence, maximum temperatures on the Earth’s surface close to sea level occur where the atmosphere blocks the least energy – tropical arid deserts. Deficient in the most important GHG – H2O. Tyndall showed high temperatures at elevation – less atmosphere blocking insolation, regardless of GHGs.

You are hopelessly ignorant of both science and history. You accuse every scientist that made a significant discovery a pioneer in an infant scientific field just to fit it in your false worldview. New theories are not necessarily in a new field. But you are clueless about that of course. And you can’t distinguish between a heretic and the Establishment. The greenhouse effect was and is the established theory so Arrhenius cannot be a heretic, he was the Establishment. I’m tired of correcting your many errors.

Like the red line they drew in Syria? LOL! That is all they have done is dither! Wake up! Get some facts! NO one wants to see your opinion stated as a fact. Everyone recognizes it is just an OPINION, and based upon past history,. no facts to support it!

No, YOU do not get it. YOU do not understand the chain of command. YOU do not understand following orders. YOU do not understand who gets to allow WHAT underlings report. YOU do not KNOW what they have.

Stop projecting your ignorance on me just because YOU do not understand. If you have some facts to rebut my statements, use them! But I will not wait for that non-event! LOL

There is nothing new about inconvenient events derailing scientific careers. In the mid 1990s, I was part of a global community doing gene therapy research, seeking to treat diseases through targeted delivery of genetic materials to specific parts of the body. It was hot stuff, there was plenty of research funding and venture Capitalists and Wall Street were splashing the cash.

Then, suddenly, one set of researchers pushed too far, too fast, too soon, and an unfortunate trial participant called Jesse Gelsinger died. Suddenly, every scientist on funding committees treated gene therapists as Reds Under The Bed.

This is OK if you are tenured and can ride out the storm. It is less good if you need to make your career publishing in this field and gain tenure track through doing so. No Grant money the next three years. Too bad, other fields can be funded instead.

Truth was, almost all gene therapy researchers were doing good, conservative, safety-first research. They were blameless but temporary pariahs.

I experienced the strange suggestion that there was lots of funding for developmental biology. That was like telling Roger Federer that there is lots of money for quarterbacks in the NFL. I had not researched developmental biology, I had no publications, I had no mentors, I had no network. Not really useful advice, was it?

Everything was about senior Committee Members scrambling before their politician masters to prove they were not gene therapy fellow-travellers. I was disgusted, but silent. As a 32 year old you have no voice in the corridors of scientific power, let alone political power.

The reality was that one particular approach had been wrong. You do not ban all pharmaceuticals because thalidomide went wrong, do you?

So to expect rational behaviour in the corridors of power, much less selfless behaviour, is totally unrealistic and naive. Politicians and senior scientists with big egos are constitutionally incapable of admitting error, so you get these stand offs, which in the case of climate science has lasted 25 years.

Broadly politicians have no clue about science, no knowledge of how scientists behave and no way to judge them as informed superiors.

You want to change that, you need 25 senators with science degrees, research experience and/or private sector experience in science/engineering. More than that number in Congress. and a goodly number of them in the media.

What you actually have in politics and the media in the main are arts graduates who write click bait and know how to manipulate voters.

We have 650 MPs in the House of Commons in the U.K. I would struggle to name 25 who are competent to comment on any matter concerning science, engineering or early stage science/technology businesses. This does not stop them passing The Climate Change Act, spouting drivel on national TV etc etc.

Nothing will change until those capable of judging Prof Pielke objectively, fairly and honestly have sufficient Share of Voice to drown out the sirens of reprehensible nonsense…….

Thank you Judith, for this forum. As a Georgia Tech grad in Physics, who spent my career in research and development in a number of fields including robotics, water treatment,, materials ( see Dr Katherine Logan Ga Tech, TiB2) then winding up my professional career teaching at a relatively short lived charter school, Tech High. My love and respect for Ga Tech is without limit. When teaching, I emphasized the following, 1. Climate has historically changed, repeatedly. 2. The climate of the earth is complex, influenced by everything from solar output to atmosphere composition to cosmic radiation and cloud formation. 3. The effect of different influences may vary by several orders of magnitude and it is important to understand the relative impact 4.Money available for research tends to attract researchers and unfortunately a bias toward the funders view. 5. Scientists must be eager to drop or modify a hypothesis once a single good piece of contrary data is found that is credible and repeatable. 6. Always be suspicious of folks whose arguments are backed by ad hominem attacks, attempts to silence critics and curious manipulation of data. 7. It is imperative for us to preserve the environment and the economy. It is wise for us to be attentive, observant and accurate in our assessments of the effects and causes of changes in our environment, but it is also important to avoid panic based on the hysterical folks with other agendas. 8. Heretics in one age often turn out to be correct in the next.

As an Atlantan and parent of a GT student I am gratified to learn that Ms. Curry is on the GT faculty. I am a lawyer and have never been a scientist but about 10 years ago I became very concerned about climate change to the point that I started reading a lot of the climate science literature and working with clients who were developing renewable and clean technologies. It didn’t take me very long to find conflicting viewpoints and questionable data and claims in the literature. It was also clear that there really wasn’t much of a reasoned debate occurring between the climate science experts, which was really sad. Here we have what is potentially the most imminent threat to our planet and the quality of the debate was pretty pathetic.

I thought, how wonderful it would be if we could have a debate that was backed up by data and facts and subject to cross-examination, like you would have in a trial or other adversarial proceeding. Like the Scopes trial some hundred years ago to “settle” the debate on creationism vs. evolution. I think it would be as riveting to the layperson as the Scopes trial